Fates of Jewish Families in Thuringia 1933-1945

“I arrived as a wealthy person in Erfurt
and departed as plundered Jew.”
Fates of Jewish Families in
Thuringia 1933-1945
Monika Gibas, Ed.
This picture shows the deportation of the Jews from Eisenach on May 9, 1942. The population of
Eisenach is cleary visible on the background of the picture, observing the procession from the
kerbside.
Foto: Stadtarchiv Eisenach
Translation: Julia Palme
Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen
Regierungsstraße 73, 99084 Erfurt, Germany
www.lzt.thueringen.de
2009
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Content
Introduction Monika Gibas
5
“...my wife and I left poisoned Germany in January 1939. We had no other choice but to leave, because we could feel that our lives were at risk.”
11
Committed Patriot and Protestant – Dr. Walter Spiegel – Lecturer from Thuringia
Ramona Bräu
“I arrived as a wealthy person in Erfurt and departed as plundered Jew.” David Littmann and the Mohrenapotheke in Erfurt
Janine Heiland
“As was confidentially ascertained, a number of customers have (...) cancelled
their monthly accounts at the Jewish department store “Römischer Kaiser” in
Erfurt as from September 1, 1935.”
The Department Store “Römischer Kaiser” (KRK), Erfurt
39
Thomas Wenzel
“The German singer only knows one condition, only one spirit, one people and one loyality. This is his tacit service to the fatherland.”
The Family Bernhard Prager from Apolda
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Philipp Gliesing
“...well if you buy a boat ticket to leave Germany on such and such a day we’ll release him for that day.”
The Industrialist Family Ruppel, Gotha/Saalfeld
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Christian Faludi
51
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“I specifically emphasize that I have no intention to emigrate at my age...”
Injustice beyond Death – The Fate of the Singer
Jenny Fleischer-Alt from Weimar
Henriette Rosenkranz
“We literally escaped with the last train.”
The Friedmann Family from Jena
Christine Schoenmakers
“So far I have never undertaken any steps to emigrate.”
The Company “Gebrüder Heilbrun” from Nordhausen
Marion Kaiser
“... if we have to wait for Brazil or any other opportunity, we are going to grow old and dull and our last pennies will soon be wasted.”
The Kirchheimer Family from Eisenach
75
85
93
Tina Schüßler
“Stop purchases at David Binder’s!” Binder’s Department Store in Pößneck
67
105
Philipp Gliesing
Bibliography 115
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Monika Gibas
Introduction
“Aryan“, “Aryan paragraph“, “Aryanization“ –
these terminologies originate from the vocabulary of the racially motivated antiSemitism that became a central pillar of the
Nazi regime’s social policies with its accession to power in 1933. The so-called “Aryan
Paragraph” was enacted as the first measure
of the “Reichsgesetz zur Wiederherstellung
des Berufsbeamtentums” (Civil Service Restoration Act). The encyclopedia entry of “Der
Große Brockhaus” elucidates the term “Aryan
paragraph” in the edition of 1935 as follows:
“A decree with the aid of which the racial core
of the German people, that is the Aryan race,
is to be protected and promoted through the
elimination of non-Aryan people.”
“Non-Aryan”, according to the authors, was
every German citizen, who was considered
a descendant of “Non-Aryan, especially Jewish parents or grandparents; it is applicable
as well, if one of the parents is non-Aryan. In
case the Aryan origin descent is ambiguous,
a certificate has to be obtained from the experts on “Rasseforschung” (“racial research”)
authorized by the Reich Interior Minister.”
With the NSDAP’s (National Socialist German
Workers’ Party) accession to power in spring
1933, the Aryan paragraph marked the beginning of the state organised expulsion of
people of Jewish faith, as well as German citi­
zens who fell into the category of “Jews” ac-
cording to the conditions set by the bureaucrats of the Nazi state.
Early on, the Land Thuringia, which played
a leading role in the institutionalisation of
racial policies, founded a “Landesamt für
Rassewesen” (regional state office for racial
matters) on July 15, 1933 in Weimar through
the appointment of a Nazi racial theorist, Hans
F. K. Günther, from the University of Jena.
This was the first institution of its kind at the
Federal State level and Karl Astel, a physician
and racial theorist, was appointed chairman.
In the °Thüringer Staatszeitung° (Thuringian
newspaper) of July 23, 1933, he proclaimed
that the institution’s central aim is “to free the
race’s flux of life from sick and alien hereditary
dispositions”. Under his leadership, the office began establishing an archive on hereditary details, wherein every third inhabitant of
Thuringia was to be recorded within a short
period of time. Already by 1935, over 466 000
dossiers had been produced, which paved
the way for the institutionalisation of racial
policies in Thuringia. On September 15, 1935,
the “Entjudung” (systematic elimination of the
Jewish people), as it was officially called in the
national socialist party- and state-bureaucra­
cy’s jargon, was supplemented with the
“Reichs­bürgergesetzt” (The Law of the Protection of German Blood and Honor), which was
a series of laws that became known as the
6
“Nuremberg Laws”. These racial policies were
supported by a ferocious mixture of ideology,
pseudo-scientific findings and doctrines. The
anti-Semitic propaganda was spread through
the national socialist standardised press, the
educational system, popular fiction, as well
as arts and culture. “Sömmerda fending off
the Hebrews”, “Special School for the Jews of
Meiningen”, “The Jews of Gotha. We must not
associate with them. A List of Jews.”– these
were the headings of Thuringian newspapers
that had been published in the context of the
government act introduced in the autumn of
1935. In the ‘Gothaer Beobachter’ (local newspaper of Gotha) it was written: “In the following we make known to all Jews still residing
in Gotha (...) This publication is finally going
to create clarity. From now on, it can no longer be accepted that Germans interact with
Jews or buy Jewish products with the excuse
of not knowing that XY is Jewish (...) Who­
ever is obeserved interacting or doing business with Jews is guilty!” Furthermore, it was
openly declared as a threat that: “a number of
people have been indentified, who shop in
Jewish stores and have personal relationships
with Jews. Those fellows that have forgotten
their descent, we are going to shame and
make them known to the public through the
Stürmerkästen (public reading of the strictly
anti-Semitic newspaper “Der Stürmer”). They
should not dare complain as we had warned
them!”
In the following years, the NS regime drove
the systematic social expulsion and isolation
of the Jews by labelling them as “Volksver­
derber” (spoilers of the German race) trough
a chain of acts and administrative orders to
promote perfection. Many professions were
no longer accessible to Jews and they were
forbidden to use social- and cultural facilities
like public pools, parks, libraries, cinemas and
theatres. The impulses for the growing exclusion of the Jews from all social life came not
only from the authorities, but also from the
lower levels of the NSDAP and communal
administrative units. As written by the chairman of the “Deutschen Gemeindetag” to the
Thuringian interior ministry on July 28, 1934,
a year before the adoption of the Nuremberg
Laws: “As we are aware, the Jews are no longer allowed to use the public lido. In another town it was recently discussed whether
to deny the Jews access to any sort of baths
(steambath, saunas, indoor pools). From our
perspective, this measure should be welcomed. This is a pleasant evidence of volkish
self-consciousness and racial awareness. The
people no longer tolerate sharing the same
pools, baths, steamrooms and saunas with
alien races. The authorities should do their
part to support the people in this matter.
From my point of view, it would be hazardous,
if the authorities would continue to allow
alien races the use of such public places as
the message that will come across the people
is that their rejection is not considered justified and would contribute to the re-blurring
of the racial distinctions.”
At the beginning, the main objective of the
new rulers was to force the Jews to leave the
country. The National Socialists applied following methods in order to achieve this: legally backed acts of discrimination (laws, de-
7
crees), harassment by the administrative
authorities, psychological terror and use of direct physical violence through “spontaneous
erruptions of the people’s wrath” or by state
organised pogroms like the Night of the Broken Glass in November 1938. The determined
politics of expulsing Jews from Germany was
also financially motivated. In the timeframe
of 1935 until 1938, the Nazi authorities generated a high number of measures that aimed
at the fiscal extortion and confiscation of the
Jews’ financial assets. All levels of public authority participated directly in the extortion
of the Jewish citizens. The Reich ministry of finance, especially the regional ministries of finance, the affiliated exchange control offices,
as well as the fiscal authorities and main customs offices on the local level implemented
the aforementioned policies. The exchange
control offices oversaw the “Reichsfluchtsteuer” (Reich flight charge) that had to be paid by
those who decided to emigrate. They collected charges such as the “Judenvermögensabgabe” (capital levy for Jews) and taxes for personal effects and moving items. They blocked
bank accounts, enforced export- and foreign
exchange acts and applied penalties on those,
who did not comply with exchange control
regulations. With help of the so-called safety
rulings they were able to freeze all Jewish private and company assets. Whoever attempted to avoid the requirements of the fiscal authorities by fleeing the country, was traced
through “Reichssteckbriefe” (search warrants).
The state organized anti-Semitism was also
motivated by politico-economic objectives.
Soon after 1933, many Jewish businesses
were in a difficult situation due to the boycott-campaigns such as that on April 1, 1933,
the refusal of bank loans and other forms of
harassment. The owners had to declare themselves bankrupt and were forced to sell their
businesses. All sales since 1933 were predominantly caused by the pressures and constraints that confronted Jewish businesses
increasingly under the new political circumstances. What took place was a subtle form of
expropriation, which coincided with the dictatorship’s policies aiming to “free the German
economy of all Jewish influence”. After the pogrom on November 9/10, 1938, the Nazi government took the next step proclaiming the
compulsory “Aryanization” of businesses to
fulfill its politico-economic objectives.
The term “Aryanization” was used in the authorities’ jargon to name the processes of
Jewish citizens’ economic expropriation.
It originated from the German-Volkish anti-Semitism of the 1920s. In the 1930s, it primarily signified the economic suppression
and the destruction of Jewish livelihoods in a
broader spectrum and secondly, the transfer
of Jewish assets into “Aryan” property.
The implementation of the economy’s “Ary­
anization,” which was the process of step-bystep expropriation of the Jewish citizens after
1933, was one of the most profound transfers
of property in modern German history. Until 1939, around 100.000 businesses owned
by German citizens of Jewish origin had to
be given up or sold to buyers of German descent. One of the reasons for the “Aryanization”
processes was to ban the “typical Jewish” en-
8
richment through German economic life. The
creeping expulsion of Jewish enterprises was
not only result of the anti-Semitic policies of
the government. The economic repression
was also heavily dependent on the behaviour
of the “Aryan” entrepreneurs. Already in 1933,
they insisted on the destruction of the Jewish
competitors’ livelihoods independent from
government or NSDAP authorities.
On December 3, 1938, the “Verordnung über
die Zwangsveräußerung jüdischer Gewerbebetriebe und Geschäfte” (law on expropriation of Jewish enterprises and businesses)
was issued, which came into force on January
1, 1939. In Thuringia, Jena’s newspaper introduced the new decree to its readers with the
headline “The Path to Aryanization”. It elaborated: “The state does not tolerate any Jewish
influence on the economy – It only takes care
of orderly transfer into Aryan ownership. The
national socialist state never gave any reasons
to doubt that it demands the removal of Jews
from all positions, wherever their engagement
is considered as politically and economically disruptive. The Aryanization of Jewish businesses has become a widely known process,
yet its overall implementation does not take
place in the desired speed. The previous decrees only allow for voluntary Aryanization, of
which, however, became increasingly common by spring 1938. Despite this, there is a
vast number of Jewish businesses and properties, where the sale to Aryan buyers appears
to be difficult, partly because Jewish owners
left the country or did not show any signs of
understanding the demands of time (...) The
Reich government’s new decree is mainly
concerned with the remaining commercial
property owned by Jews, and also with agricultural and other landed property, bonds,
gold assets and art treasures. The dominating
idea is that the Jews have to relinquish all direct and indirect influence, which they have
derived from economic strength, be it by the
management of enterprises, through shareholdings, property assets etc. (...) The new law
creates the necessary possibilities in order
to accelerate the Aryanization process up to
the desired speed. In those cases of voluntary
sale, the appointment of a trustee is no longer necessary. It goes without saying that the
Jews are no longer allowed to purchase any
new properties or objects made of gold.”
In Thuringia, around 650 family businesses fell victim to the “Aryanization” according
to the latest research results. Alone in 1938,
around one hundred Thuringian businesses had been aryanized and for another hundred, negotiations were already in process.
Two hundred businesses alone had to close
down due the boycotts and plummiting demands by 1938. In October 1938, even before the decree for compulsory “Aryanization”
came into force the NSDAP districts Schleiz
and Sonneberg already announced that they
were now “judenfrei” (cleansed of Jews) and
on October 27, the Rhön newspaper’s headline read: “Vacha – cleansed of Jews!”. The municipal legal office of Jena formally thanked
Carl Schmidt, the commissary for “Aryanization”, for his services in a written communication on June 12, 1939: “My request from December 12, 1938, to dissolve and wind up
Jewish retail businesses in the district of Jena
9
on the grounds of the decree on the exclusion of Jews from the German economic life,
has been completed. Due to your expertise
and your active, intelligent commitment regarding this politically and economically difficult matter, the liquidation and winding up
were conducted without any obstructions.
This way, I was able to communicate the successful completion of the issue to the responsible authorities punctually and without any
provisos. This is reason enough to thank you,
dear Mr. Schmidt, for your exceedingly valuable and commendable cooperation.”
With the prohibition of any economic activity and full exclusion from all professions and
all opportunities to live life as a normal citizen had perished for the Jews. On January
17, 1939, the protection of tenants was abolished for Jewish people and on April 30, 1939,
a directive came into existence which stipulated that non-Aryans had to be evicted from
“Aryan” houses. This happened in Thuringia’s
towns and parishes. From then on, the Jews
were forced to live in very limited space, in
the so-called “Jew-houses” that were provided by the municipalities.
During the war, the national socialist policies
towards the Jews became increasingly radicalized. From 1941 onwards, it was no longer about dispossession, emigration and abscondence but rather about the annihilation
of the Jewish citizens. From March 4, 1941,
those capable of work had been obligated
to forced labour. From September 1, 1941, all
Jews above the age of six years in the German
Reich had to wear the Yellow Star. They were
no longer allowed to leave their residential
district without permission from the police.
On October 1, 1941, a general prohibition of
emigration for Jews out of the German sphere
of influence, came into existence and the deportation of Jews from the Reich began on
October 14, 1941. On November 25, the regu­
lation on the confiscation of Jewish assets in
case of deportation was decreed. The mass
transports of Jews into the ghettoes and extermination camps began on May 26, 1942.
One of the first transports with 515 Thuringian
Jews departed from Weimar’s train station to
the ghetto Belzyce near Lublin, wherein their
traces dissappear. Only one person of this particular transport has survived the Holocaust.
Amongst the deportees of May 10, 1942 were
Frieda and Siegfried Kirchheimer from Eisenach. Their story is going to be told in this
book. The cover shows Frieda among many
other Jews, who are on their way to Eisenach’s
trainstation on may 9, 1942. On May 10, 1942,
she was going to board the train in Weimar
leaving to the ghetto Belzyce. This pricture
was the last sign of life. “Parents departed on
May 9, 1942. No messages for months.” – This
short notice was received by Frieda’s daughter Ingeborg, who was already living in England, sent by an acquaintance in Eisenach.
Frieda and Siegfried Kirchheimer were said
to be missing. Until today, there is no reliable, definite count of the murdered Thuringian Jews. The volume at hand is a collection of ten biographical miniatures authored
by students of the Friedrich - Schiller University of Jena, which traces the life and suffering of Thuringian Jewish families between
10
1933 and 1945 who fell victim to the Nazi racial policies. These stories represent an initial
approach towards the biographies of those
families. This is being done, first and foremost,
on the grounds of research in different Thur-
ingian archives. It was possible only in a few
cases to find survivors of the Shoa or to interview their descendants. Therefore, not all
details could be uncovered and not all questions could be answered.
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Ramona Bräu
“...my wife and I left poisoned Germany in January 1939.
We had no other choice but to leave, because
we could feel that our lives were at risk.”
Committed Patriot and Pro­testant –
Dr. Walter Spiegel – Lecturer from
Thuringia, Gotha/Gera
Walter Spiegel was born as son of the merchant Albert Spiegel in Berlin on December
16, 1887. Already during his schooldays at the
Schiller – secondary school, he was enthused
about evangelic religious studies and keen to
study Protestant theology. After a course of
academic studies at the universities of Halle,
Lausanne, Berlin, Greifswald and Erlangen,
Walter Spiegel earned a doctor’s degree in
theology in Erlangen on June 6, 1910.
Walter Spiegel passed the first state examination in theology in Stettin in April 1912. From
May 1912 until August 1914, he was working
at libraries in Bremen, Wolfenbüttel and at the
Kaiser-Wilhelm library in Posen. With the beginning of World War I, the patriotic vicar-aspirant, Dr. Walter Spiegel, took a completely
different professional route. Considered unsuitable for combat duty due to a heart condition, he began a probationary year at the
Friedrich-August secondary school in Eutin
in the area of Oldenburg on August 31, 1914.
From his point of view, as teacher he did his
“service” to the “fatherland”.
ThHStAW, Personalakte aus dem Bereich Volksbildung
Nr. 27017 Bl. 1d
The teacher Dr. Walter Spiegel, Easter 1930.
In July 1915, the seminarist Spiegel took the
examination for a teaching post at secondary
level and thus gained permission to teach religious studies, Latin and German language.
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As young teacher, he began his career in the
town of Eutin. From there, he moved to the
venerable secondary school Ernestinum in
Gotha in mid-1918 where he accepted his
first permanent position as teacher in 1918,
just before the end of the war. After the war,
Dr. Walter Spiegel continued to work in the
field of education, although he had successfully passed the second state examination in
theology in November 1915.
At first, Walter Spiegel resided in the Seebachstraße 19 in Gotha. He belonged to the
town’s more affluent citizens, because of his
father, who had passed away in 1920, and left
him with a business in Berlin and some other
shares. Walter Spiegel experienced the difficult economic circumstances of the post war
and inflation period not without throwbacks.
He lost his share assets and other outstanding debts were accumulating. This led to the
Stadtarchiv Gera
The secondary school at the Nicolaiberg 6 (today Rutheneum) in Gera, date unknown.
13
seizure of his salary by the bank house Max
Mueller. Within the heated political climate at
the end of the 1920s, Dr. Spiegel, who had advanced to the position of assistant master, was
confronted with the allegation by conservative-national colleagues and parents claiming
that he was instigating “pacifist propaganda”
at school. The patriotic Dr. Spiegel, who was
also member of the “Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland” (Association for Germanness
Abroad), however, managed to refute all the
accusations against him.
At the beginning of the 1930s, the conditions
for teaching and studying at the Ernestinum
became increasingly difficult and were constantly accompanied by cutbacks and abatements. At this time, the married assistant
master changed his workplace upon his own
request on April 1, 1932. He took up a position in a school at the Nicolaiberg 6 in Gera.
Walter Spiegel moved together with his wife
to a flat in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 52. Also
his widowed mother Margarethe, nee Anheim, moved with him. Walter Spiegel, who
was known among his pupils as strict but just
teacher for religious studies, also liked to perform as violin soloist at charity concerts. He
was teaching only for a short period at his
new workplace. In the spring of 1933, his career as teacher ended with the occupational ban.
Suspension, Persecution and
Escape
As a consequence of the “Gesetz zur Wie­
derherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums“ (Civil Service Restoration Act) of April 7, 1933 that
contained an “Aryan paragraph”, which stipulated that all “non-Aryan” civil servants were
to be sent into retirement, Dr. Walter Spiegel
was dismissed from the teaching profession
on October 1, 1933. Spiegel, who stemmed
from an assimilated family, considered himself a Protestant. For this reason he initially refused to give any specification about his des­
cent on the “Aryan questionnaire” and he was
not dismissed until he was denunciated by
one of his colleagues. All his subsequent attempts to resist against the indiscriminate
measures remained without success as he
was regarded a Jew by the terms of the racial
ideology of the National Socialists.
The expulsion of Gera’s Jews from their offi­
ces and positions had begun in early February
1933, directly after Hitler’s appointment to
Reich chancellor, with the anti-Semitic campaign against the head physician of the municipal hospital, Prof. Dr. Simmel. Simmel was
ousted from his position, because of his Jewish descent. The boycott campaign of April
1, 1933 against Jewish entrepreneurs, lawyers and physicians that was propagated by
the National Socialists across the Reich, which
for Gera signified the targeting of the department stores “Tietz” and “Biermann”, also represented the prelude to the Jews’ persecution
and the destruction of their livelihoods. It has
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ThHStAW, Personalakte aus dem Bereich Volksbildung Nr. 27017 Bl. 093v
Questionnaire for the implementation of the Civil Service Restoration Act of April 7,
1933. Spiegel makes no specifications on his descent under section e).
15
not been conveyed, how Walter Spiegel perceived these developments as it is presumed
that he was not affiliated to Gera’s Jewish congregation due to his Protestant family background and his choice of profession.
The rapid sequence of anti-Semitic laws and
measures also affected the Spiegel family. In
May 1933, the civil servants, employees and
workers of the council of the town of Gera
were prohibited to purchase products in Jewish businesses at the disposition of the mayor
Kießling. In the following months, more and
more occupational bans and anti-Semitic regulations had been enacted. The anti-Semitic
baiting indicated economic collapse to many
Jewish companies and businesses. In Gera,
the Biermann family who owned the department store at the Johannesplatz 8, attempted
appealing to the sense of justice of Gera’s citizens against the economic exclusion process
without success. From the end of 1935, the
then “Aryanized” fashion boutique operated
under the name of “Modehaus Fritz Jahnke”.
There was also an aggressively displayed hat­
red against all Jews and against everything
Jewish that increasingly dominated the life
situ­ation of the Spiegels. In August 1935,
Gera’s SA stormtroopers (paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party) organised a sightseeing tour under the motto: “Who knows
ThHStAW, Personalakte aus dem Bereich Volksbildung Nr. 27017 Bl. 096
A handwritten supplement to the “Aryan questionnaire” indicating Walter Spiegel’s non-Aryan descent.
16
the Jew, knows the devil!” On September 11,
1935, the local paper “Geraer Beobachter”
declared “Jewish children as “contaminants
among Aryan pupils.” The Nuremberg race
laws followed on September 15/16, 1935 and
declared marriages between Jews and nonJews a “racial disgrace” and ultimately degraded Jews and labeled them second class
citizens. A few weeks later, Gera’s mayor requested permission from the Thuringian Interior Minister to officially register all Jewish
businesses located in Gera in order make the
“Aryanization” process more effective.
The maintenance of their living standards became increasingly difficult to many Jews due
to the advancing “Aryanization” of whole occupational fields and commercial lines. The
involuntary pensioner, Walter Spiegel, tried to
make ends meet and to improve his income
by giving private lessons. In September 1936,
he requested permission to teach non-Aryan
children from the Thuringian ministry of edu­
cation. Although, he was allowed to teach,
the childless couple could not see any future in Germany. On October 27, 1938, Walter Spiegel applied for permission to relocate
abroad. For the Spiegels, this implied, after
losing employment and reputation, the abdication of their remaining income – the former
teacher’s pension - , as it could only be transferred to a German account. The events of the
night of the pogrom on November 9/10 had
a decisive impact on the living conditions
of the Spiegels as it left all remaining Jewish
businesses destroyed, the synagogue devastated, detained and taken all Jewish men –
among them Dr. Walter Spiegel – to the con-
centration camp Buchenwald. Walter Spiegel
returned ill from the detainment at the concentration camp after several weeks and they
felt that their lives were at risk.
After the Spiegels had stored and sent their
personal items to the company Röhling & Co.
in Bremen for shipment, they emigrated from
Hohegeiß in the Harz – their last residence in
Germany – via Switzerland to Cincinnati/U.S.
in January 1939. Their personal items never
reached their destination in Ohio. Presum­
ably, it was sold at the highest bidding price
in one of the numerous auctions of “Jewish
relocation items” to “Aryan comrades”. The
payments of the Thuringian pension institution to the retired teacher were transferred to
a special account for “pension benefits” at the
Dresdner Bank in Gera with the permission of
the Thuringian head of finances and thus became property of the Reich and in December 1940, the Gestapo office in Weimar took
all steps necessary for the expatriation of the
Spiegels. Furthermore, in conjunction with
the expatriation, Dr. Walter Spiegel was also
deprived of his doctor’s degree.
Unavailing Search for Justice
In 1949, Walter Spiegel, who was working as
professor at the Quincy College in his new
home Quincy, Illinois, claimed compensation
in a letter to Thuringian president. His claims,
however, were rejected on the grounds that
the Thuringian compensation law did not
allow payments like pension to be refunded. The valuables that had been confiscat-
17
ThHStAW, Personalakte aus dem Bereich Volksbildung Nr. 27017 Bl. 113
ThHStAW, Personalakte aus dem Bereich Volksbildung Nr. 27017 Bl. 126
18
ed by the fiscal authorities after Spiegel’s ex­
patriation and the remaining liquidated funds
could not be investigated according to the
heads of the revenue offices in Hanover and
Blankenburg and therefore could not be reimbursed either.
19
Janine Heiland
“I arrived as a wealthy person in Erfurt
and departed as plundered Jew.”
David Littmann and the Mohren­
apotheke in Erfurt
David Littmann, born on June 12, 1882 in Philadelphia, was the youngest of eleven siblings.
His parents had immigrated with their children
to America. Yet, they were unable to settle and
all their hopes of a better life had been disappointed, which made them return to Germany
in 1887. At that time, the youngest son, David,
had reached the age of five. In Germany, David’s father ran a licensed house. Due to the narrow circumstances of the family, it was a great
privilege for the youngest son to study at university. At the turn of the century, David began
to study pharmacy at the University of Königsberg.
He chose this particular course of study as it allowed him to work during the holiday period
in order to finance his education. Shortly after
he had successfully completed his degree, he
acquired his first pharmacy in Lobsens in the
province of Posen.
He got to know Margarete Regina Aufrecht,
who was later to become his wife, in Berlin. She
descended from a Jewish family that orginally
stemmed from Upper Silesia. During that time,
she enjoyed better education at an upperclass
girls’ school in Breslau. On April 17, 1912, Dav-
G. Littmann
David Littmann as student of the Königsberg
University.
id married the six years younger Margarete at
the registrar’s office in Berlin and after a year,
she gave birth to their first son, Werner, in Lobsens. Littmann moved with his young family
20
G. Littmann
David and Margarete Littmann (left) with their youngest son Gerhard and a distant relative.
to the town of Memel, where he obtained a
new pharmacy and he was working as a pharmaceutical commissioner of the regional governing body. He conducted the revisions for
the pharmacies at the countryside together
with the medical officer of health, Dr. Huwe.
David Littmann could not take part in World
War I due to a congenital condition of his feet.
In 1923, his second son Gerhard was born in
Memel. Five years later, David and his family left the area, where civil war conditions had
been prevailing. He set up a new business in
Erfurt and the family quickly settled in its new
home town. At the weekends, the Littmanns
often went by train to the Thuringian Forest:
during summer hiking and during winter skiing.
On March 1, 1928, David Littmann had acquired a pharmacy from the Allendorf family in Erfurt - the so-called Mohrenapotheke
(Moor’s Pharmacy). After rebuilding it in 1929,
this became the most modern pharmaceutical facility in Erfurt. David Littmann had modernized the pharmacy’s rooms and altered the
private rooms of the upper floor into surgery
rooms, with an expenditure of 100.000 Reichsmark. The Mohrenapotheke was renovated as
21
ThHStAW, Oberlandesgericht Erfurt, Nr. 1092 Blatt 6-10 Anlage 6
The Mohrenapotheke’s front view before the conversion of the building.
ThHStAW, Oberlandesgericht Erfurt, Nr. 1092 Blatt 6-10 Anlage 5
The Mohrenapotheke’s façade after the conversion.
22
Excluded from the German “Volksgemeinschaft”
(national community)
G. Littmann
The ten year old David Littmann in Oberhof.
it was a family property that was ought to be
taken over by the sons at one point in the future. David Littmann was regarded as an excellent pharmacist and highly valued by his customers and colleagues. Furthermore, he was
known as distinguished master of apprentice
and it was reckoned a good reference to accomplish an apprenticeship at his pharmacy.
The Jewish belief played a subordinate role to
the Littmann family. David had always disliked
his Jewish first name. If he would have been
born in Germany, presumably the parents
would have given him a different name - for
his older brothers, who had been born in Germany before the parents’ immigration to the
U.S. at the end of the 19th century, had been
named Siegfried and Adolf. The fact that they
celebrated the Bar Mizvah (admittance to the
congregation) of their sons Werner and Gerhard bears evidence of their remaining Jewish
sense of tradition. The Littmann family’s Jewish
roots were given unexpected emphasis when
Hitler took power and the government propa­
gated racially motivated anti-Semitic laws. All
of a sudden, they were no longer German
citi­zens, but Jews that represented an “inferior
race” and it was not long when the family felt
the impact of those policies. Werner, the oldest son of the Littmann family, was denied his
school-leaving examination in 1934 and so, his
dream of being a pharmacist like his father had
been obstructed, which made him move to
Holland and take up a job as a gardener. Gerhard, the youngest son, was exposed to antiSemitic hostilities through teachers and fellow
pupils at school every single day. Hence, the
contact to other Jewish families became increasingly important to the Littmanns as time
passed and no German was prepared to associate with them any longer.
23
Boycott and Compulsory Sale
The boycott campaign of April 1, 1933, against
Jewish businesses, medical practioners and
lawyers throughout the Reich also hit the Mohrenapotheke at the Schlösserstraße in Erfurt.
Like so many other Jewish businesses in Erfurt,
the pharmacy became a target of anti-Semitic attacks. SA men positioned themselves in
front of the pharmacy and on their signs and
leaflets, which they distributed to the pedestrians, it said: “Whoever buys Jewish products
is a traitor to the nationalist cause!”
This was not the only open anti-Semitic de­
monstration by the SA’s men on April 1, 1933.
Since Hitler’s takeover, repeatedly, there had
been posters and leaflets published in front of
the pharmacy that were intended to threaten
customers not to enter.
ThHStAW, Oberlandesgericht Erfurt, Nr. 1092 Blatt 6-10 Anlage 2
Anti-Semitic baiting on a leaflet distributed in
front of the Mohrenapotheke.
Only a minority of Erfurt’s citizens felt no intimi­
dation by those actions and continued to do
their usual shopping. These customers, however, risked being photographed which would
later be used to publicly shame them. One day,
a lady received a leaflet after she had come out
from the pharmacy: “You just have been photographed while you were buying Jewish. You
are going to be shamed in public!”
ThHStAW, Oberlandesgericht Erfurt, Nr. 1092 Bl. 6-10 Anlage 1
ThHStAW, Oberlandesgericht Erfurt Nr. 1092 Bl. 03
Anti-Semtic poster that had been placed at the
Mohrenapotheke’s entrance door.
Pedestrians that dared to enter Jewish shops,
received such leaflets.
24
David Littmann had not only suffered from the
permanent anti-Semitic boycott-measures, but
also from his colleagues, who denounced him
to the Gestapo and reported the loyal customers to the SA. In order not to leave the pharmacy
unobserved, the family moved from the Herderstraße into the pharmacy building in 1935.
Nonetheless, they were unable to stop the economic breakdown, in which they were intentionally pushed into. Although, they made the
lowest offer for a medication purchasing order
of the town’s prison, they did not receive the
order. Additionally, the health insurance funds
no longer compensated for the medication of
customers if it had been purchased in a Jewish business. For those reasons, Erfurt’s citizens
refrained from purchasing from the Mohren­
apotheke. Due to the economic damage and
also the increasingly harsh anti-Semitic measures
David Littmann decided to finally give up and sell
the pharmacy. At a time when the Nuremberg
race laws had only been two weeks old, a buyer that was willing to make profit from of the misery of a Jewish fellow citizen, was easily found. On
November 2, 1935, the pharmacy and the entire
property were sold at a price of 413.000 Reichs­
mark, an amount which represented only a fraction of its true value, to Franz Quermann.
Not only did the buyer obtain the pharmacy and the property itself, but also everything
what was inside it: furniture, medical goods
and all pharmaceutical products. Shortly after, to demonstrate that the Jewish property
had been transferred to an Aryan owner and
to show that any further boycotts were pointless, the customers found a sign stating: “German pharmacy.”
If the sale would have not taken place under these circumstances before November
1935, it was going to happen through the
“Aryanization”-processes the following year.
On April 1, 1936, a new Reich decree on pharmacies came into existence that forced all
Jewish pharmacists to sell or rent their property before September 30, 1936. After the sale,
the Littmanns had to move out of the pharmacy building. At first, they were staying at a
befriended Jewish family’s place and later rented two small furnished rooms in Friedrichroda,
just for a few weeks.
From the agreed total selling amount of
430.000 RM, David Littmann received only a
sum of 95.000 RM. A reason for that is that the
buyer had not paid the monthly rates of 3.000
RM and the mortgages encumbering the
pharmacy’s property due to the modernization efforts had to be acquitted. But not even
the 95.000 RM were at the family’s disposal as this money had to repay their debts that
were caused by the boycott measures. All that
was left was a bank balance of 9.578 RM from
which a considerable amount was taken by
the German gold discount bank for the clearance of an overseas transfer and confiscated as
a so-called “Judenabgabe” (Jew tax).
Emigration
In consequence of the compulsory sale of the
Mohrenapotheke and the intensifying anti-Semitic reprisals, David Littmann considered emigrating as the only way to escape the national
socialist terror. Yet, it was not ought to be a leap
25
ThHStAW Oberlandesgericht Erfurt, Nr. 1092 Bl. 6-10 Anlage 3
Extract of the sales contract of November 1935.
26
in the dark and so David Littmann searched for
prospects to establish a livelihood in Belgium.
As he could not find anything, he travelled to
Italy where he bought a cloves plantation with
the family’s remaining funds. The family prepared for their exile but they were held up
from emigrating by the buyer of the pharmacy for several months, who refused to pay the
remaining rates. It was only after the amount
was paid that the Littmanns were able to emi­
grate to Italy in September 1936. They settled
in Imperia, a small town close to Genua for
two years, where the family suffered far less
anti-Semitic assaults compared to what they
encountered Germany. Yet Italy was not to be
the final destination of their escape.
had secured tickets for the family. After enormous stresses and strains, the Littmanns eventually managed to leave to the U.S. in 1939.
As a native-born American it was possible for
David Littmann without any obstacles, which
other Jewish or political emigrants had to confront, to enter the U.S. with his family. Having received the confirmation of their American citizenships, they tried to secure tickets to
a ship from Genua to New York. For that purpose they were lacking the financial means
and in order to obtain the necessary amount,
David Littmann wrote to the pharmacist who
had bought his pharmacy in Lobsens many
years ago and still owed him a certain amount
of money. He asked him to transfer the money
to Italy but due to the ban of foreign exchange
transfers that had become effective in Poland,
the transfer did not take place. Thus, the Littmann family had to travel the long route from
Italy to Poland to board a ship to the United
States. Avoiding Germany, they travelled via
Yugoslavia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia to
Poland while the pharmacist from Lobsens
Compensation Demands
They arrived in New York without any funds
and were forced to live in great poverty. David
Littmann, who was now at the age of 57 years,
could no longer work as a pharmacist as he
hardly spoke any English and did not hold the
necessary American certificates. For this reason, he took up the profession of a bookbinder and the whole family had to help with this
work. David Littmann passed away in New York
on February 17, 1975. Both of his sons, Werner
and Gerhard, still live in the US today.
On March 28, 1946, the pharmacy that had
been sold by the owner to an Aryan under
the pressures of the circumstance in 1935,
was confiscated at the instigation of the Land
Thuringia. A trustee was appointed that was
to represent the interests of David Littmann
and four months later, on August 1, 1946, David Littmann demanded compensation.
On February 5, 1951, the Higher Regional Court
ruled that the buyer, Franz Quermann, has to
return the pharmacy to the previous owner.
David Littmann, however, was asked to pay a
settlement amount of 165.000 DM. This arbitral verdict is contradictory to the Thuringian
compensation law, which acts on the assumption that all Jewish owners who sold their
property after 1933 were acting under high
political pressure. Given that David Littmann
27
G. Littmann
David and Margarete Littmann in Chicago, September 1970.
was not able to pay the demanded amount,
he was dispossessed a second time: the pharmacy was declared public property and was
accrued by the DDR (German Democratic Republic) state.
Only with the demise of the DDR, reassignment demands could be claimed again. In
1989, however, not only Gerhard and Werner
Littmann claimed the parental assets, but also
the offspring of Franz Quermann. They pleaded at court that the pharmacy was not sold
under the coercion of the political circumstances, but due to the poor management of
the business and to the encumbrance of the
Jewish owner. Nevertheless, Gerhard Littmann
28
ThHStAW, Land Thüringen, Ministerium der Finanzen Nr. 3400 Bl. 135
was able to prove to the court that the pharmacy had been bankrupted by the economic reprisals of the national socialist regime and
was hence sold at a price far below value. After
more than 60 years, the Mohrenapotheke was
returned to its Jewish owner.
29
Philipp Gliesing
“As was confidentially ascertained, a number of customers have (...)
cancelled their monthly accounts at the Jewish department store
“Römischer Kaiser” in Erfurt as from September 1, 1935.”
Stadtarchiv Erfurt
Sales campaign “Volkstümliche Tage” at the department store “Römischer Kaiser” around 1920.
30
Stadtarchiv Erfurt
Sales campaign “Rekord-Tage” in 1925.
The Department Store “Römischer
Kaiser” (KRK), Erfurt
At the turn of the year 1905/06, Siegfried Pinthus, a shop owner at the Friedrich-WilhelmPlatz in Erfurt, recognized the favourable lo-
cation for the establishment of a department
store at the Anger in Erfurt. Together with
Arthur Solms Arndtheim, a relative of the family corporation Tietz, he launched the department store Römischer Kaiser on March 23, 1908.
The KRK GmbH (KRK Ltd.) developed into a very
successful enterprise and by the year 1927, the
31
sales area had been doubled by an extension.
A large lounge was built, where bands and
fashion shows provided entertainment to Erfurt’s citizens. Special days of sale and service
ensured the popularity of the store among the
people from the town as well as the countryside. The staff enjoyed extensive training, there
was a company creche, a pension scheme and
a sports club. Furthermore, there was a lending library with 5000 volumes as well as a box
office collection. All those things stood for exemplary social standards and at times, up to
450 staff were employed by the store.
Social Responsibilty
Siegfried Pinthus and Arthur Arndtheim belonged to Erfurt’s upper class. The two fathers
of a family, were not only bound by profession,
but also related by marriage. Arthur Arndt­
heim was born on June 8, 1879 in BrieskowFinkenheerd, a small municipality south from
Frankfurt/Oder and his sister, Hedwig, was
born March 22, 1882 to parents Luis and Cassandra Arndtheim, nee Tietz. Hedwig got married to Siegfried Pinthus, born in 1870 in Berlin.
The married couple moved to Erfurt in 1896,
Stadtarchiv Erfurt
Window-dressing around 1930.
32
Stadtarchiv Erfurt
The departments store’s opening ceremony in 1929.
where Siegfried’s father, Louis Pinthus, ran a
department store and held a leading position
at Erfurt’s Jewish community. In January 1903,
Hedwig and Siegfried’s first daughter, Lotta Johanna, was born followed by a second daughter named Elly Fanny a year later.
Siegfried Pinthus rejected public appointments. Instead, he intensively dedicated himself to Jewish parish life. From 1926 until 1937,
as chairman of the Jewish community in Erfurt,
he advocated Jewish heritage and revived the
parish life. In 1937, he was co-founder of the
“Association for Jewish History and Culture”
and later led the “Thuringian Working Group
for Jewish Agency”. In 1933, he organised a
meeting with young people to talk about Palestine as emigration had become a central
topic in the Jewish community since Hitler’s
aggressive challenge in 1922. Controversial
discussions between Zionists and assimilated
Jews were on the daily agenda. Through active commitment to their religion, the owners
of the department store Römischer Kaiser opposed the zeitgeist of assimilation.
33
Hedwig Pinthus was chairperson of the Israeli
Women’s Association and of the Women’s Association of the Lodge of Erfurt and she took
part in their representative’s gatherings as a full
member. She was living in a mansion in Hohenzollernstraße 24 in Erfurt and after her husband had passed away in November 1937, she
moved in with relatives in Berlin and resided
in the Bayernallee 19a until July 1938. During
the war, the nearly sixty year old lady fled to
the Netherlands, where she passed away in
1941.
Jüdische Landesgemeinde Erfurt
Portrait of S.Pinthus (oil-based paint).
Active women – “Lights of the
Family”
The realization of Jewish life at home and within the congregation would not have been impossible without the versatile knowledge and
skills of the women. In the Pinthus family, religious literacy was complemented with general education. Hedwig Pinthus enrolled for
the summer term 1932 at the Friedrich-Schiller
University of Jena to obtain a degree in philology and successfully completed her studies in
1937 with a dissertation on the “The Normandy in Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Novels”.
The daughter, Lotta Johanna Pinthus, was a
trained welfare worker and became a member of the women’s organization’s commission since 1929. She got married to Dr. Louis
Herzberg, the personnel manager of the department store Römischer Kaiser and she gave
birth to two daughters, Eva and Hanna. From
1928 until July 1933, the Herzberg family lived
in a large residence in the Gustav-Adolf-Straße
2. At first instance, the political circumstances immediately after January 1933 caused the
family to flee to France but they returned to
Erfurt in October 1934. The children, Eva and
Hanna, were taken to Hedwig’s grandmother.
In 1935, Lotta Johanna, Dr. Louis Herzberg and
the two girls left the country for good. Initially,
they found refuge in Nijmegen (in the Netherlands) and later moved to Amsterdam.
Through a decree by the Reichsführer-SS
(Heinrich Himmler) to the government of Erfurt on November 13, 1937, the Herzberg family were robbed of their German citizenship –
like hundreds of other people and, therefore,
all their assets fell to the Reich. Eva was deport-
34
ed to Auschwitz and then to Mauthausen on
November 3, 1944, where she was presumably murdered. On Eva’s prisoner card index it
was noted: “domicile of the next of kin: Father:
KL Au.” The father was murdered in Auschwitz
in 1941. Details of Lotta Johanna Herzberg’s
fate, nee Pinthus and her daughter are still unknown.
The Department Store “under new
management”
There had been numerous boycott-measures against the popular department store
and one of the branches located in the Johannesstrasse had to be closed on the basis of an official directive. In 1935, the popular
entry hall, the lounge and the lending library
had to close and in 1936, the chamber of industry and commerce dissolved the internal
continu­ation school. It became evident in the
position reports of the Gestapo from 1933 until 1936 that the department store was under constant observation. In August 1935, the
Reich tournaments of the SA took place; the
police report read: “The Jewish businesses did
not have any noteworthy custom during the
propaganda days. Even on the following days,
the Jewish businesses were anxiously avoided.
As was confidentially ascertained, a number
of customers have (...) cancelled their monthly
accounts at the Jewish department store “Römischer Kaiser” in Erfurt as from September 1,
1935.”
The decline in sales caused by the anti-Semitic
agitation became obvious by the end of 1936
and the daily life of the entrepreneur’s families became increasingly difficult. The owners
were compelled to search for sincere potential buyers of the store. The compulsory sale of
the Römischer Kaiser was monitored, controlled and authorized by Erfurt’s mayor Kiessling
in consultations with the Gauleiter (leader of a
Nazi-Gau) Sauckel. The NSDAP member Völkert, an ombudsman of the Munich party exe­
cutive committee, represented the buyers: Hans
Quehl, an entrepreneur from Leipzig, Dr. von
Zabiensky, bank director from Erfurt and the
lawyer Dr. Walter Ahlburg from Berlin, who had
specialized in the acquisition of “Jewish depart-
Announcement in the newspaper “Thüringer
Allgemeine” of October 3, 1937.
35
ment stores” by the means of bank loans. The
partners Pinthus and Arndtheim felt obliged
to sell the store for half of the agreed price as
some of the loans had not been approved.
The instant dismissal of all Jewish employees
was stipulated in the annex of the agreement.
taken to Buchenwald and imprisoned for several weeks. In March 1939, the district manager
and NSDAP member Ernst Grasshof acquired
the residential building of the Arndtheim family at a price of 35.000 RM payable to the tax
In October 1937, the public learned the news
about the family business’ sale and attention
was drawn to it by the press as Swastika flags
were put up on the building as signs. Shortly
after, there was a great run to the store as the
customers were no longer afraid to do their
shopping there. The “Aryanization” process,
however, did not go as smoothly as expected. The owners of the retail sales had especially trusted the NS propaganda before the power takeover and had hoped, as an effect, for
the closure of the modern store. They suspected that behind the name “Hans Quehl & Co.”
is the Jewish owner in disguise but with the
help of “Aryan” advertisements the new partners attempts to squelch such rumours were
succesful.
The families Arndtheim and Pinthus had no
longer any means of existence as the result
of their department store’s “Aryanization”. On
November 21, 1937, shortly after the loss of
his life’s work, Siegfried Pinthus passed away
in Friedrichroda due to a heart disease. Arthur
Arndtheim had been arrested once in 1936
and since then, he was forced to live in secret.
At the time of the November pogrom (the
Night of the Broken Glass) he stayed in Berlin. At this same night, the executive director
of the store Max Arenstein and the youngest
son of the Arndtheim family, Karl Heinz, were
Announcement in the newspaper “Thüringer
Allgemeine” of November 12, 1937.
36
Advertisement in the local newspaper “Thüringer Allgemeine” of March 14, 1938.
authorities and in April 1939, the family emigrated to Palestine and lived there in the city
of Ramat-Gan. On January 31, 1940, the Arnd­t­
heim family was officially expatriated.
37
No Compensation
After the Red Army had occupied the town of
Erfurt on July 3, 1945, Hans Quehl was disappropriated on the basis of the SMAD decrees
124/126 (Soviet Military Administration in Germany), as he was considered to be a charged
fascist. He filed an objection and attempted
to vindicate the contract of sale, but defected
eventually to the western occupation zone. In
the post war period, the heavily damaged department store was used as provisioning station.
On May 21, 1946, the sequestrated property
was assigned for beneficial use to the town of
Erfurt and was put on the “A-List” for restitution processes with the requirement “that the
business is intended for compensation”. The
Thuringian department for compensation at
the presidential office attended to the claims
of the original owners. Georg Chaim, who was
assigned to administer Jewish assets, endeavoured to get in contact with the next of kin
of the expelled family as he tried to exhaust
the legal situation to the benefit of the claimants and resisted the municipality’s attempts
to bring about a final decision without any
contact to the aggrieved parties. Chaim appointed the economic advisor Hille as trustee,
who made intensive efforts to get the store released.
On September 27, 1947, Erna Arndtheim, the
widow of Arthur Arndtheim, applied directly at the presidential office for compensation
but the prospects for success were grim. In
the course of the year 1947, Chaim and Hille
advised the recovery commission for sequestrated businesses at the municipal council on
the straight-forward legal situation. Yet, due
to a cabinet decision of the government from
March 1948 – accordant to the SMAD decree
69 – the store was registered in the cadastre under public property and the former department store “Römischer Kaiser” became
the largest emporium of the DDR. The “Amt
zum Schutze des Volkseigentums” (Office for
the Protection of Public Property) notified
the directorate of the synagogue congregation in July 1950 that there was no legal basis on which to recompense Erna Arndtheim.
She passed away in Konstanz at the Bodensee
in 1975. After reunification, her son Karl-Heinz
Arndtheim brought the new owner, the Karstadt AG, to trial. The proceedings ended in a
settlement and Karl-Heinz Arndtheim was finally granted compensation.
39
Thomas Wenzel
“...well if you buy a boat ticket to leave Germany on such and
such a day we’ll release him for that day.”
The Industrialist Family Ruppel,
Gotha/Saalfeld
The brothers Emanuel and Abraham Ruppel
stemmed from Stadtlengsfeld on the Thuringian Rhön Mountains and in 1870, they moved
together with their families to the town of
Gotha and opened the ironmongery “Gebrüder Ruppel” in the “Haus zur Goldenen
Schelle” at the Hauptmarkt 40. They sold metal goods and house- and kitchen utensils. The
business took a favourable development. In
1894, the brothers bought an estate in the
Rein­hardsbrunner Str. 57-59, where they began
to build up their very own factory, manufacturing and varnishing household goods. After the death of the two founders, Robert Ruppel, one of Emanuel Ruppel’s sons, took over
the upcoming family business in 1906 and the
first own utility patents were registered that
were to provide the foundation for the subsequent economic success of the company. In
the following years, the production of industrial sheet metal fittings, for example, for the
automotive industry, increasingly replaced the
manufacturing of household goods.
Since December 1929, Marianne Brandt acted as head of the development department
in the family business that had been renamed
to “Ruppelwerke GmbH”. The student of the
Stadtarchiv Gotha 2/1415, Bl. 28 (Katalog Ruppelwerke)
Innovative products manufactured at the Ruppelwerke.
Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius modernized
large parts of the product-line. Standishes,
bookends, moneyboxes, lamps and trays were
produced according to her blueprints. In November 1932, however, Marianne Brandt left
the “Ruppelwerke”.
40
Wenzel
Products of the Auerbach & Scheibe AG.
41
After the death of the councillor of commerce,
Robert Ruppel, in 1931, his son Dr. Ernst Ludwig Ruppel, who had been born on September 18, 1900 in Gotha, assumed the business
dealings. Like his older sister Elisabeth (18971983), Ernst had attended the “Ernestinum” in
Gotha, where he gained his qualification for
higher education. Thereafter, he studied economics, natural sciences and business administration in Frankfurt a. M., Munich and Berlin. In the winter semester of 1925/26, he took
courses in macroeconomics and law at the
Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Berlin and on
February 25, 1927, he was awarded his doctorate with a dissertation on “the development of
the German automobile industry and its current situation” in Berlin.
The commercial operations of the company in Gotha had been very successful, as Ro­
bert Ruppel acquired an engineering factory
in Saalfeld. “Auerbach & Scheibe” – a company with a long tradition that was specialised
in manufacturing drilling and rounding machines, had been domiciled in Saalfeld since
1889 and had also been a family business until the takeover. Parts of the production line
went to Asia and Latin America. Ernst Ruppel
was now member of the incorporated company’s directorate in Saalfeld and simultaneously continued to be executive director of the
“Ruppelwerke GmbH”. In 1929, Ernst Ruppel
married the trainee teacher Annemarie Fleischhauer from Gotha, who resigned from the
school office after their wedding. In November of the same year, the first son, Klaus-Ro­
bert, was born followed by a second son, Ernest Dieter, in January 1934.
Wenzel
Cover of Ernst Ludwig Ruppel’s dissertation.
Defamed as “Jewish Enterprise”
With the beginning of the Nazi regime, the
Ruppel family faced stigmatization and social
exclusion, which was going to reach its peak
in November 1938 and the first glaring evidence appeared in August/September 1935.
In the “Judenspiegel”, a supplement of the local newspaper “Gothaer Beobachter”, families
were openly denounced as “jüdisch”, like many
other families and businesses. The engineering
company “Aucherbach & Scheibe AG” in Saal-
42
Bildarchiv Stadtmuseum Saalfeld, 09119
Employees of the Auerbach & Scheibe AG in 1936.
feld was one of the largest employers of the
region and Dr. Ernst Ruppel was the managing
director and all shares were held by the family.
Unlike in Gotha the business owners had not
yet been publicly defamed in Saalfeld.
Since the April-boycotts of 1933, which had
been initiated by the NS government and
were supposed to be a signal for the “Entjudung” (the cleansing from Jews) of the economy, Jewish businesses were increasingly sold
to “Aryan“ buyers, with which the amplitude
and the dimension of those sales caused the
emergence of a regular market. Since 1935/36,
the NSDAP became actively involved through
the appointment of economic advisors in the
Gau (administrative district of the NSDAP).
They had the authority to ultimately decide
on the “Aryanization” of the businesses. Even
so the economic advisor of Thuringia, Staats­
rat (privy council) Otto Eberhardt, only supervised the “Aryanization” processes from
March 1938, in June 1937, Dr. Walter Schieber,
his most important assistant and later successor, already enquired about the ownership
situ­ation of the Ruppels’ company in Saalfeld.
Otto Steuerwald was to become the most important actor in the background regarding efforts made for the company’s “Aryanization”.
He was the plant manager of the “Auerbach
43
Wenzel
Catalogue of the Auerbach & Scheibe AG.
44
ThHStAW, NSDAP Gauleitung Thüringen, Nr. 23 Bl. 35
Otto Steuerwald’s proposal on the change in ownership.
45
& Scheibe AG” at that time and the expulsion
of the Jewish owner was in his personal interest, as he planned to take over the company
together with his partner and to do so, he denunciated Dr. Ernst Ruppel in numerous letters
to the Gau economic advisor’s office. Steuerwald’s behaviour irritated the responsible advisor and was, thus, requested to refrain from
such activities.
The “Aryanization” of the Auerbach & Scheibe AG in Saalfeld
Dr. Ruppel realized the situation’s gravity by
all means and he was well aware that he, as
a Jew, was to be cut off from his own company. Thus, he attempted to overwrite the company to his children but they were considered
as a “half breeds of 1st degree” (“Mischlinge I.
Grades”) and therefore Ruppel’s suit was declined and the sale of the company became inevitable. Ernst Ruppel was not willing to leave
such a decision to the NS authorities and so
he tried utilizing his influence as much as possible in an effort to find a buyer independent
from the Gau economic advisor and he eventually found Willy Starcke, a member of the directorate, as a suitable buyer. Willy Starcke was
at that time, the director of the Singer sewing
machine factory in Wittenberge near Potsdam
and he was bound to Ruppel by a long friendship as Ruppel had even dedicated his dissertation to Starcke. Hans Helmut Wilkens, Dipl.
Ing., the director of the Hoesch-Stahl company
and owner of the golden party emblem, became Starcke’s co-partner.
Ernst Ruppel tried to stay at least in the management of his business through cooperative
conduct. He approached the SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Schieber at the Gau office
for economic affairs and requested, as concession for being forced to retreat involuntarily from his business by the circumstances, the
permission to carry on as advisor to the Auerbach & Scheibe AG. He was granted to act in
an advisory position to the company and on
April 19, 1938, the acquisition agreement was
eventually signed. From the stipulated purchase price of 975.000 RM, 95.000 RM had to
be paid for “Aryanization” charges and the remainder was to be remitted in equal shares to
the previous shareholders of the Auerbach &
Scheibe AG, the heirs of Robert Ruppel that is
his widow Sophie Ruppel, his son Dr. Ernst Ruppel and his daughter Elisabeth Kaufmann. The
“Aryanization” of the long-established company had not been concluded at that time
and for the full takeover, the permission of the
Reich department of trade and industry had
to be awaited in order to deposit one third of
the purchase price to a blocked account of
Ernst Ruppel’s sister Elisabeth Kaufmann. Eli­
sabeth had already relocated to London several years ago and was as foreigner subjected
to special “Devisenschutzgesetzen” (foreign
exchange protection laws). The main issue
and therewith the main obstacle for the conclusion of the proceedings was apparently the
concession that had been made in the negotiations on the “Aryanization” process, which
stated that “the Jew” Ruppel was still responsible as an advisor on export even after the sale
of the business and this was to be avoided at
all costs.
46
ThHStAW, NSDAP Gauleitung Thüringen, Nr. 23 Bl. 140
Report on the planned “Aryanization” of April 14, 1938 (presumably released by the office of the
Gau economic advisor).
47
Bildarchiv Stadtmuseum Saalfeld - 06689
Employees of the Auerbach & Scheibe OHG, circa 1940.
The “Judenreferat” (department for Jewish affairs) of the Reich department of trade and industry offered an extortionary bargain to resolve the complex issue. Dr. Ruppel was ought
to make a payment of 45.000 RM without substitution to the German gold discount bank
and to accept the annulment of the contract
on his advisory position within a timeframe of
six months and only under these conditions
the “Aryanization” of the Auerbach & Scheibe
AG was going to be authorized. It was after
Ernst Ruppel had made the payment and the
“Aryan” buyer, Hans Wilkens, had repeatedly
contacted the responsible bodies in Thuringia and Berlin, that the exchange control office
at the Thuringian finance office in Rudolstadt
authorized the payments for the purchase of
Elisabeth Kaufmann’s, nee Ruppel, company shares. Therewith, the “Aryanization” of the
company was officially approved and completed.
48
Forced Termination of the
Ruppelwerke in Gotha through
“protective custody” in the Concentration Camp Buchenwald
date of the company that was now registered
as “Gothaer Metallwaren-Fabrik GmbH” was
not even concealed in the company chronicle,
published in 1942.
The acts of violence that erupted after the assassination of the legation councillor Ernst
vom Rath in Paris on November 9/10, 1938,
also hit Ernst Ruppel. Together with thousands of other Jewish people, he was taken in
“protective custody” at the Buchenwald concentration camp. The prisoner, registered under the number 20735 was visited by Heinrich
Heu­nisch, the executive director and stakeholder of the Ruppelwerke in Gotha and in
the presence of Heunisch, Dr. Ernst Ruppel –
on pain of violent measures against his family
- was forced to sign an additional contract on
the “Aryanization” of his venerable family business in Gotha.
The Road to Exile
On November 12, Heinrich Heunisch and his
three new partners received the approval of
the Reich governor of Thuringia for the “Aryanization” of the Jewish business in Gotha. The
takeover price for the entire assets of the Ruppel family in Gotha was stipulated at a sum of
470.000 RM from which the family was supposed to receive 410.000 RM and a balance of
60.000 RM had to be deposited as “Aryanization” charge into an account of the Thuringian state bank. With the “Aryanization” of the
two companies, large private and company
assets were switched to different owners overnight. From now on, more than 1.000 workers
and employees worked for the “Aryan” owners as intended by the Nazis. The takeover-
Ernst Ruppel managed by chance to emigrate together with his family. After his arrest
and detention at Buchenwald, his wife undertook great efforts to obtain visas for the United
Kingdom and she personally went to the po-
ThHStAW, Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, Geldkarte Ernst Ruppel
Ernst Ruppel’s stored value card from the concentration camp Buchenwald.
49
lice president, Paul Hennicke, and begged him
for her husband’s release. Hennicke agreed on
the release of Dr. Ernst Ruppel under the condition that he was able to provide a valid exit
visa. Through acquaintances, Annemarie came
coincidentally into contact with Frank Foley,
the head of the passport department of the
British embassy in Berlin who was at the same
time, working as an agent of the British secret
service. He supplied the whole Ruppel family with entrance visas to the United Kingdom
as he did for thousands of other Jewish families. On board a Dutch plane, the Thuringian
Quelle: „Kampf und Sieg in Thüringen“, Abb. 58
Superintendent Paul Hennicke.
enterpreneurs family fled its home country for
good.
In exile in Stourbridge close to Birmingham,
the family succeeded to rebuild their existence
and to regain some wealth. The family, however, was not going to retrieve the factories
in Germany even after the end of World War
II. With the short remark that the assets had
been become part of the people’s property,
the family was mulct of its property a second
time and no compensation demands were
put forward in 1989/90.
50
ThHStAW, Land Thüringen, Ministerium der Finanzen Nr. 3706 Bl. 28
Decline of the „Auerbach & Scheibe AG’s“ reassignment.
51
Christian Faludi
“The German singer only knows one condition, only one spirit, one
people and one loyality. This is his tacit service to the fatherland.”
The Family Bernhard Prager from
Apolda
Bernhard Prager was born in the Hessian town
of Wenings on June 29, 1888. He was still a
child when his parents decided to relocate to
Apolda in order to assume the business of an
aunt. Around the turn of the century, the small
Thuringian town developed into a hub for
textile and engineering industry causing the
flourishing of the regional economy. The sixty
Jewish inhabitants of the town that were predominantly involved in the trading profession
carried a large share of the increase in prosperity. Many of them earned their money in the
textile trade, refining or selling textile products, running department stores as well as a
chocolate factory or butcheries – and the family Prager was no exception. Salomon, Bernhard’s father, maintained a business for coats
and guts for which the whole family worked.
Consequently, Bernhard completed an apprenticeship as a merchant, accordant to the
family tradition, and prepared himself to assume the business dealings someday.
Before that could happen, World War I broke
out and Bernhard Prager, who was patriotic to the core, was one of the first volunteers
of the imperial army. Like so many Jews in the
German Kaiser Reich, he regarded the military
Peter Franz
The dwelling and business house of the Prager
family at the turn of the century. Bertha Prager
shown right from the window.
service as a chance to assert himself and to
prove to his nation that the Jewish Germans
were prepared to be of service to their fatherland. Severely injured by the frontline-battles,
the soldier returned home while the war was
52
our of his bravery, the Jewish coat trader received the Iron Cross of the fatherland, which
he was wearing proudly even on his civilian
clothes.
Advertisement of the business in the local
newspaper in the 1920s.
still ongoing. A shot to the head had injured
him to such an extent that the physicians were
forced to implant a large silver sheet that was
to remind him of the combat all his life. In hon-
In September 1918, Bernhard Prager got engaged to Gertrud Katzenstein from Erfurt
and they married the following year. Both of
them drew repeated attention to themselves
as they helped poor people in the hardship of
the post war period and because they were
very dedicated to the Jewish congregation in
Apolda. Despite the attempts to socially conform, the Pragers continued adhering to their
Peter Franz
The Pragers: Gertrude and Bernhard (standing on the left), Bertha and Salomon (sitting on the left) on
the wedding day of their niece , Selma, in November 1921.
53
religious traditions, celebrated Jewish holidays
and buried their dead at the Jewish cemetery
in Erfurt.
In the 1920s, Prager’s business developed - despite the devastating economic situation –
in such a good manner that the couple was
able to open a new butcher shop. Bernhard
Prager was a dignified member of the “Freien
Fleischerinnung Apolda” (Independent Butcher’s Guild Apolda), and he was respected for
his diligence. Next to his professional activities,
the merchant was also actively involved in the
“Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten” (Reich
association of Jewish veterans), in the “Büchsen-Schützengesellschaft Apolda” (marksmen
guild of Apolda) and a choir with “16 songloving butcher-souls” whose motto was: “The
German singer only knows one condition,
only one spirit, one people and one loyality.
This his tacit service to the fatherland.” In 1922,
the birth of the first son, Heinz, completed the
family’s happiness and fortune.
Boycott and Segregation
Although, there was an agile national socialist movement already in the 1920s and the
NSDAP was participating in the Thuringian
government since 1930, the last years or the
Weimar Republic proceeded free from anti-Semitic reprisals against the residing Jewish people here but the situation changed abruptly in
January 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich chancellor and when the NSDAP was
given the power over Germany. Already in
March of the same year, the NS regime prohib-
ited the operations of the “Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens” (Union
of German Citizens with Jewish Belief) that advocated the interests of those Jews in Germany that were willing to assimilate and maintain
a location group in Apolda. It became prone
to anti-Semitic assaults throughout the Reich
that had been organised by the NSDAP party base. Initially, the assaults against the Jewish
populace had been of spontaneous character,
before they culminated in anti-Semitic campaigns – the so-called April-Boycott across the
Reich.
Thereupon, at dawn of April 1, 1933, SA men
positioned themselves in front of 17 Jewish businesses in Apolda – among them the
business of Pragers – and refused entry to the
customers, which made significant impact as
immediately after, non-Jewish shop owners
began to label their businesses as “Aryan” and
underlined the announcement with “purely
Christian business”. Some of the Jewish shopkeepers were so terrified by the developments
that they quickly gave up their businesses and
decided to emigrate. Bernhard Prager, on the
contrary, appeared to be little impressed by
those scenes as he had risked his life for Germany during the Great War and was so severely injured in doing so, disavowed that he
was no longer accepted in his own country.
In order to demonstrate his patriotism, he was
wearing now his Iron Cross on his jacket even
more often.
Soon after the end of the boycott, Apolda was
calm again and everybody returned to their
daily routine. Bernhard Prager visited as usu-
54
Peter Franz
Bernhard Prager (in the middle) of a family trip in 1931.
al the regulars’ table at the “Goldenes Lamm”
and sang as honorary member in the choir of
the butcher’s guild, to which he donated together with business friends a banner in 1933.
Nevertheless, the situation of the Jews deteriorated visibly and in Apolda, the so-called
Stürmerkästen appeared, in which the anti-Semitic vulgar tabloid “Der Stürmer” owned by
Julius Streicher was posted with the intention
of stirring up hatred against the Jewish population.
As a result of Nuremberg laws of 1935, “registers of Jews and Jewish descendants” were
generated in localities across the Reich and
the authorities in Apolda registered 114 persons that had been categorized accordingly. The Nuremberg laws signified the increasing exclusion from the “Aryan“ society for
the Pragers as Bernhard was expelled as “Gemeinschaftsfremder” (stranger to the national
community) from all clubs and was no longer allowed to participate in the choir of the
butchers’ guild. The access to public institutions and events became prohibited to the
Jews and more and more “racial comrades”
began to take part in anti-Semitic activities like
protests against publicly shamed “race dese-
55
crators”. From 1935, transparencies sharply increased as newspaper advertisements and rallies called for the boycott of Jewish businesses.
Again, these campaigns made such an impact
that the Jews were increasingly forced to give
up their businesses and to emigrate and those
who remained strong, were soon to be a victim of the “Aryanization“ process.
action implied not only that the property of
the family was sold at a price far below value
but also the business was ruined, which signified the dilapi­dation of the family’s livelihood.
Moreover, a large part of the already marginal
revenue fell prey to the “Aryanization“ charge,
so that the Prager family received only 25 per
cent of the actual purchase price.
“Aryanization“
The November-Pogrom (The
Night of Broken Glass) and its
Consequences
The branches of the big Jewish department
store chain “Fried & Alsberg” and “Karstadt”
disappeared from the townscape of Apolda and soon after, the regional department
stores “Rosewitz” and “Becker & Salinger” followed suit, before smaller businesses were targeted by the governmental - but also increasingly private “Aryanization“ efforts. In 1938,
members of the butchers’ guild that used to
value Bernhard Prager’s membership so highly in the previous years, suddenly became interested in one of his two properties and the
interested parties negotiated with him and
agreed on the partly sale of the property with
the intention of erecting a commercial building. After the municipality learned about the
deal, Mayor Julius Dietz decided without further ado, that the premsises had to be ceded
to the town in exchange for a minimal compensation. Subsequently, the house on the
premises was demolished and one part of
the property was sold to the guild. The contract, which had been negotiated by the parties before, was revoked and replaced by an
agreement between the municipality of Apolda and the interested parties. This course of
In the face of this harassment, the Pragers managed to endure the following years, in which
the anti-Semitic attacks became increasingly
repressive, without any greater harm. During
the pogrom of November 1938, their windows
were broken by the “furious people’s rage” but
Bernhard Prager escaped the accompanying
mass arrests due to his status as former combatant. Yet the Pragers remained not unaffected by the internments to the Buchenwald concentration camp while after the first prisoners
had been released, a group of Jewish women that was spontaneously founded and to
which also Gertrud Prager belonged to, took
care of the badly abused men. Another result
of the pogrom was that the Jews were forced
to clear the resulting damage on their properties at their own expense and to come up
with an “atonement payment” to the amount
of one billion Reichsmark. The Apolda’s Jews
were compelled to pay 134.600 RM to the national socialist state according to the calculations of the local fiscal authorities. Furthermore, as a consequence of the anti-Semitism’s
56
ThHStAW, Land Thüringen, Ministerium der Finanzen Nr. 3477 Bl. 069r
Ruling allowing the confiscation of the property, September 15, 1941.
57
dynamisation through the pogrom, the Jews
were no longer allowed to go to “Aryan“
schools and for this reason, Heinz Prager, the
son of Bernhard Prager, who visited the fifth
grade of Apolda’s secondary school, was expelled. Heinz moved to his grandmother Fanny Katzenstein in Erfurt and went henceforth
to a Jewish school that was subsisted by the
“Reichsvereinigung der Juden In Deutschland”
(Reich Association of Jews in Germany) but it
was not long before Heinz had to leave this institution as well as the NS authorities commited him to forced labour in one of Berlin’s armament factories due to the manpower shortage
that was prevalent with the outbreak of World
War II. Thereupon, his grandmother, who was
81 years old at that time, stayed all by herself in
Erfurt, before she moved to her daughter and
son-in-law to Apolda in 1940.
The economic and social situtation of the
Pragers had dramatically deteriorated at that
point as the family business had been closed
per compulsory enactment by the town’s
mayor in spring 1939. Hence, Bernhard and
Gertrud were out of work and forced to live
of their savings. In the same year, the NS authorities took the radio receivers from all Jews
of Apolda – among them the Prager family.
Since 1939, they were obligated to bear the
names “Sara” and “Israel” and the labelling of
their identification papers were accompanied
by the compulsory display of a yellow Star of
David with the inscription “Jew” on it, which
complemented the surveillance of the Jewish Germans and their segregation from the
“Volksgemeinschaft” (national community).
At that time, the majority of Apolda’s Jewish
inhabitants had emigrated due to the persitant reprisals. For those who still had not managed to emigrate by then, the departure became next to impossible from October 1941
onwards.
The “Final Solution to the Jewish
Question”
By the end of 1941, the “solution to the Jewish question” proceeded to the “final solution,”
and it was not long that the deportations began to take place across Thuringia. Jews from
Apolda fell victim to the “evacuation” to the
East for the first time in May 1942. On the
strength of Bernhard Prager’s “combatant status” the local authorities made him an instrument of their measures and as an involuntary
collaborator, he was pressurized to deliver the
message of their impending transport to 15
other Jews in Apolda. On May 9, they were
picked up and - together with hundreds of
other Jews from all over Thuringia – taken to
the Gestapo prison in Weimar. The following
day the detainees were taken to the train station from where they were transported on the
waggon train “Da 27’” together with 987 other
German Jews to Belzyce, close to Lublin in Poland. Most of the deportees died shortly after
in the gas chambers of the Majdanek concentration camp. At first, Bernhard Prager and his
family remained untroubled by this fate on the
grounds of their privileged status but the period of grace, however, only lasted a few more
months until they were also deported on September 20, 1942.
58
ThHStAW, Land Thüringen, Ministerium der Finanzen Nr. 3477 Bl. 070
Bernhard Prager’s statement of property from September 13, 1942.
59
Yad Vashem Archives, 064/269, Bl. 35
Extract of the deportees-list of the transport
XVI/1‘, which took Bernhard and Gertrud Prager as well as her mother Fanny Katzenstein to
the ghetto Theresienstadt in September 1942.
The train carried 877 people, mainly of older age.
Only 92 survived the “Third Reich”.
In contrast to the other deportees, Bernhard
Prager, his wife and his mother in law were
not taken to Poland, but to “Theresienstadt”
“the ghetto for the elderly”in the “Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia” that had been established as “showcase–camp” for “privileged
Jews”. At first, the couple was forced to sign
a “nursing home agreement” for the accomo-
dation in the ghetto, which was similar to a
concentration camp and this agreement between the Pragers and the “Reichsvereinigung
der Juden in Deutschland” (Reich Association
of Jews in Germany), materialised on September 9. The stipulated price for the stay in the
“ghetto for the eldery” until death amounted
to 13.847 Reichsmark, which matched the total sum of the remaining mobile assets of the
couple. The family had to register their stationary assets in a declaration of property on
September 13. Two days later, municipal tax
inspectors came to the Pragers and estimated their real estate at a value of 11.000 Reichsmark and seized the entire house including
all furnishings. The Pragers were only allowed
to take a few personal belongings with them
that were of low material value Bernhard Prager, nevertheless, succeeded to withhold some
valuable religious objects from the financial
authorities. Shortly before his deportation, he
was able to pass a Hanukkah candleholder
and Sabbatt cloth to Jewish friends, who were
meant to hide it from the authorities and keep
them in rememberance of him. On September
19, 1942, the time had come when Bernhard,
his wife Gertrud, the 83 year old mother-in-law
and three other Jews from Apolda were taken to the Gestapo post in Weimar. Again, there
had been hundreds of Jews gathered, who
were going to be deported. On the lists of the
transport XVI/1-Da 517 to the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, Bernhard and Gertrud had
been reduced to the numbers 519 and 520 of
the total 877 numerics, each of which meant
a human life. Shortly after their arrival at the
ghetto, Gertrud’s mother, Fanny was the first
to fall victim to the inhumane conditions and
60
she died in December of the same year. The
52 year old Bernhard Prager was still able to
bear the conditions for nearly two years until
he died in “Theresienstadt” on September 26,
1944. The loss of her husband simultaneously
meant the loss of Gertruds Prager’s privileged
status and after, she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was instantaneously murdered after her arrival in one of the gas
chambers at the camp. The traces of their
son, Heinz, also lead to Auschwitz. In 1942, he
was first taken from Berlin to a ghetto in Riga,
Latvia, before he was allocated to an “Arbeits­
kommando” (work squad) at the concentration camp Auschwitz. Weakend by the exertions and suffering of various diseases, Heinz
Prager fell prey to the “selection at one of the
medical barracks” and was killed by means of
a “Phenolin” injection into his heart.
Peter Franz
Picture of a Sabbatt cloth owned by the Prager family: They handed it over to friends just before their
deportation.
61
The Pilferage of the Deportees
Even before the Pragers had left their place of
domicile, a number of interested parties were
claiming the property that had fallen to the
German Reich. Individuals as well as the authorities attempted to assert claims on the
property, of which the town rejected. The municipal authorities declared that they could not
sell the house before the end of the war and
were instead going to rent it out to interested
tenants. On October 19, 1942, the local tax inspectors recorded all of the household articles
that had been left by the Pragers, estimated
them at their sales value and offered them for
sale at a public auction two weeks later. Numerous residents of Apolda took up the offer and enriched themselves on the property of the deportees. Although the town had
not been affected by the destructions of the
war just yet, people bought everything from
the second hand “underpants” and “corset” to
“Goethe’s collected works” to “kindling wood”
and “leather lounge chairs” that the bailiff presented for sale. The earned profit amounted
to 5.853,68 Reichsmark, which went directly to the accounts of the fiscal authorities that
brought the raid of the Prager family to a close
and cleared their last traces in Apolda.
After the war, relatives of the robbed and murdered family claimed for compensation in order to retrieve at least the former residential
premises but their efforts failed against the
German Democratic Republic’s principles of
law, which meant that the house and the estate of Bernhard Prager were retained in state
ownership. Only after the demise of the DDR,
it was possible to return at least part of the
looted property to the family’s descendants.
62
ThHStAW, Land Thüringen, Ministerium der Finanzen Nr. 3477 Bl. 117
Purchase enquiry regarding the house of the Pragers from November 5, 1942.
63
ThHStAW, Land Thüringen, Ministerium der Finanzen Nr. 3477 Bl. 146
Release order of the property to the bailiff from October 29, 1942.
64
ThHStAW, Land Thüringen, Ministerium der Finanzen Nr. 3477 Bl. 147
Title page of the sales record from November 2, 1942.
65
ThHStAW, Ministerium der Finanzen 3477, Bl. 152
Extract of the auction record of the Prager family’s property after their deportation on
November 2, 1942.
67
Henriette Rosenkranz
“I specifically emphasize that I have no
intention to emigrate at my age...”
Eva Fox-Gal
Jenny Fleischer-Alt
68
Injustice beyond Death – The Fate
of the Singer Jenny Fleischer-Alt
from Weimar
Jenny Fleischer-Alt was born as Jenny Charlotte
Alt into a Jewish family in Pressburg (today Bratislava) on August 3, 1863. Early in her life she
decided to be baptized. She completed a vocal training and became a reputable singer. In
1884, she was employed at the courtly theat­
re of Wiesbaden and when she gave a guest
performance in Weimar, she received an offer
for a highly lucrative engagement as coloratura singer at the Weimar Theatre of which she
accepted. Since then, she was living and working in Weimar. In addition to her engagement
at the theatre, the popular singer gave lessons
as private singing teacher. Enthused by her talent, the grand duke, Carl Alexander, awarded
her with the honourary title “Großherzogliche
Kammersängerin” (grand ducal court singer).
In 1891, Jenny Alt married professor Friedrich
Fleischer and under pressure to observe the
social conventions of the family, she gave up
teaching and her engagement at the theatre.
In 1900, the Fleischers moved to their new resi­
dence – a mansion in the Belvedere Allee 6.
Eva Fox-Gal
Jenny Fleischer-Alt
Although the popular singer had given up her
engagement at the Weimar Theatre, Weimar’s
population was not forced to forego her singing altogether. Jenny Fleischer-Alt performed
as stage- and concert singer for charity events
and she continued to give singing lessons as
well and since 1920, she was teaching at a music school in Weimar. The employment, however, ended in 1927, when the head office of
the music school ignored her request to gain
a title as a professor and to conduct her own
academic class. Whether anti-Semitic sentiments were already playing a role in this decision-making, cannot be argued with certainty. In any case, Jenny Fleischer-Alt resigned
from her contract with the music school and
the students attempt to convince the head office to keep Jenny Fleischer-Alt through a pe-
69
Rosenkranz
Mansion situated at the Belvederer Allee 6. Jenny Fleischer-Alt lived here between 1900 until 1942.
tition failed and the singer retreated into her
private life.
Plundered
With the death of her husband at the turn of
the year 1937/38, Jenny Fleischer-Alt was no
longer under the protection that she used to
“enjoy” due to her so-called “mixed marriage”.
The repercussions of her new status as a “Jewish” sole heir to her deceased husband’s prop-
erties became obvious. From then on, all the
laws and decrees that had been enacted by
the Nazi rulers for the social marginalisation
of the Jewish citizens from the German “national community” and also for the systematic plunder of the same, applied also to her.
On September 7, 1939, Jenny Fleischer-Alt received a “Sicherheitsanordnung“ (safety ruling) and like thousands of other citizens of
Jewish descent, she was requested to present
a detailed statement of her assets to the finance authorities. Her statement showed a
70
ThHStAW, Der Oberfinanzpräsident Thüringen Nr. 699 Bl. 077
Specifications made by Jenny Fleischer-Alt regarding the “safety ruling”.
71
wealth of 270.000 RM, which was composed
of cash money, securities and the estimated value of the mansion at the Belvedere Allee 6 in Weimar. Jenny Fleischer-Alt presented
all the monthly expenses that she had to cover as offset. The expenses amounted from the
wag es of the house staff, the maintainance of
the house and the support of her unsound sister Ilka and her daughter Edith Gal, mother and
sister of the composer Hans Gal.
All these costs added up to 1.700 RM, which
was on par with the “allowance” that was authorized by the fiscal authorities after she had
no longer unlimited access to her account.
Her account, like the accounts of all Jews, had
been declared as only “constricted available”
by the tax authorities. This way, the financial
administration of the Nazi regime acted as
fact­ual account holder. In a letter to the tax authorities, Jenny Fleischer-Alt wrote, in addition
to the summary of her monthly expenses, the
amount of the taxes she was going to pay the
following year. The consolidated balance sheet
of her financial obligations showed clearly that
the widow was thrown into profound financial
difficulties by the deprivation of access to her
assets. This situation did not only mean a great
constraint in her usual standard of housekeeping, but also necessitated the sale of securities
in order to pay taxes for a property of which
she could no longer dispose freely.
Until the time of the regulation of the socalled “allowances”, the exchange control office “released” the income of interest to Jenny
Fleischer-Alt for the financing of her household
and particularly for the tax payments. The wid-
ow had earnings from a patent, a certain type
of painting material developped by her husband, which was at her disposal. Now, however, she was forced to inform the company that
was developing products on the basis of the
aforementioned patent to make its payments
to the constricted account.
Despite the reprisals, Jenny Fleischer-Alt had
no intentions to leave her home country and
she communicated this clearly to the relevant
authorities. She justified her decision to remain in Germany with her unsound physical
condition and she was able to prove this with
a medical attestation. Obviously, she was still
hoping, despite the persecution by the Nazis,
to remain in her home town Weimar.
Driven into Suicide
Since the abolition of the protection of Jewish tenants across the Reich on January 17,
1939 and the directive that “non-Aryans” had
to be evicted from “Aryan” houses of April 30,
1939, Weimar’s Jewish citizens were banished
from their homes and herded together in “Jew
houses”. This also applied to Jenny FleischerAlt, yet in a different way. She did not have to
leave her home in the Belvederer Allee, but her
house was declared one of the “Jew houses”
from 1940. Initially, the widow had to accomodate two fundless women, Käthe Friedländer
and Martha Kreiß and later the concertmaster
Eduard Rose. From then on, she had to provide
for three more people from the already limited means.
72
The precarious situation, however, was going
to deteriorate as a decree by the “Reichssicherheitshauptamt” (Reich Main Security Office) of
November 27, 1941 ruled that Jewish citizens
were only allowed to withdraw an “allowance”
of 150 RM from their accounts to cover their
livelihoods’ expenses. For Jenny Fleischer-Alt,
this meant that she was permitted to live from
only 500 RM. At the same time, her niece Edith Gal was deleted from the account statement, “because she has her own account and
her own allowance sum” as stated in a notification by the fiscal authorities. In desperation,
Jenny Fleischer-Alt contacted the “Deutsche
Bank” directly with the objective to achieve a
relaxation of the regulation to be able to pay
the hospital’s and doctor’s bills of her sister
Ilka, who was hospitalized due to an accident.
The bank, however, forwarded the letter without comment to the exchange control office.
They had instructed Jenny Fleischer-Alt to reimburse part of the support assigned to the
niece, which had, according to the authorities,
“exceeded the allowance”. She had to cover a
cost of about 200 RM more with her already
low monthly “allowance.” A month later, the
exchange control office received a communication from the “Gestapo” with the suggestion
to further reduce her monthly “allowance” to
300 RM.
Beside the harassment, Jenny Fleischer-Alt suffered from the loss of her sister Ilka on March
4, 1942 and she also had a constant fear of deportation, which had been announced in May
1942. Jenny Fleischer-Alt and her niece Edith
Gal considered suicide as the only way out and
during the Easter-weekend, on April 7, 1942,
Jenny Fleischer-Alt departed this life. Edith Gal
passed away four days later, on April 11, 1942,
as a consequence of the suicide attempt.
Inheritance Confiscated
Shortly before her death, Jenny Fleischer-Alt
had written a will stating that her nephew, Dr.
Eduard Wolff, was going to be the prinicipal
heir to her property. Moreover, she stipulated kind benefits for the former house personnel and she appointed Dr. Peters as caretaker
of the inheritance, who was employed at the
Thuringian trust society in Weimar. Irrespective
of the valid will, the exchange control office
claimed the inheritance of the deceased and
they demanded detailed information from the
caretaker about the current value of the assets.
Due to the still applicable “safety ruling” for his
aunt’s accounts, the nephew Eduard Wolff, the
sole heir, was even forced to file an “application for access to a constricted safety account”
in order to pay for her funeral. In connection
with this, the authorities requested a declaration from him indicating “whether he is a Jew,
a crossbreed (if so to which degree?) or an Aryan”.
In April 1942, the Gestapo excluded the exchange control office from handling the case
and seized the management of Jenny FleischerAlt’s assets. The accounts and bonds were confiscated in favour of the German Re ich and the
Gestapo decided that the maintenance of the
villa in the Belvederer Allee be passed into the
responsibility of the town Wei­mar. It bought
the prestigious real estate “in exchange for
73
ThHStAW, Der Oberfinanzpräsident Thüringen Nr. 699 Bl. 143 und rs
74
outstanding land charges and tariff rates with
an overall amount of 10.740, 83 RM”. Later, the
house served as a military hospital after structural alteration works. The Weimar revenue office took on the valuable furnishings of the villa and sold the furniture and fixtures at a public
auction in 1944. The paintings that belonged
to the descendant’s estate, however, were only
sold in underhand dealings, arguably the real
value of those and their buyers were preferred
to be kept in the dark. The revenue office kept
carpets and stoves from the estate for its own
requirements. The true heir, Dr. Eduard Wolff,
appealed against the authorities’ course of action in a futile writing to the Interior Minister,
Frick, which was forwarded via the chancellery
of the “Führer” to the Head of Finance in Rudolstadt and finally channeled to the revenue
office in Weimar.
Incomplete Restitution
After the end of the war, the nephew of Jenny Fleischer-Alt, Dr. Eduard Wolff, filed an application for the reassignment of his inheritance to the new Thuringian authorities. On
the basis of the Thuringian compensation law,
he was granted the property of the land and
the house in the Belvederer Allee 6. He did not
receive, however, the entire inheritance of his
aunt that he was entitled to according to her
testament. In the course of the proceedings,
various difficulties arose particularly in regards
to the furniture and art paintings that the national socialist authorities had confiscated and
sold. For many objects that had been auctioned, it could not be established who and
where the new owners were. One buyer that
had become known, who had bought a “baby
grand with chair and cover from the Jewish
decedent estate” simply refused to return the
pieces.
75
Christine Schoenmakers
“We literally escaped with the last train.”
The Friedmann Family from Jena
The story of the Friedmanns takes place in
Jena between 1885 and 1892. Orginally from
the Harz region, they initially settled in the
south of Thuringia in the middle of the 19th
century. This is where Hermann Friedmann
was born in Marisfeld near Meiningen on
March 19, 1870. Since September 1, 1892, he
ran a butcher shop with a joined coat trad-
ing shop together with his wife Klara (18691944) and his son Arthur (1895-1978), who
later became a partner. It was a mixture of
salesmanship, diligence and the utilizing of
leeways that allowed the Friedmann family to
progress swiftly. The division of work was consistent with the social coventions of the Kaiserreich. Hermann Friedmann ran the business, while Klara Friedmann confined herself
to domestic responsibilities.
Charles H. Friedman
Charles H. Friedman
Klara Friedmann
Hermann Friedmann
76
lishment of the Jewish congregation in Jena,
which often held and chaired by Friedmanns
at the family-owned mansion in Jena West.
For the Friedmanns it was a matter of course
to serve, alongside many others, as soldiers in
the war. They also shared the general perception that the war was just and victory the only
option. Arthur Friedmann, as former officer of
artillery and front-line soldier, was even awarded with the Iron Cross.
Charles H. Friedman
Arthur and Hermann Friedmann as soldiers in
World War I.
The international success of the family business
permitted the Friedmanns to advance relatively expeditiously to the affluent middle classes
and to raise their reputation and wealth. Like
most middle-class families, they were interested in culture and in politics to some extent.
They did not want to deny their roots and
their German Jewish faith, hence they were involved with social and religious matters within
the Jewish community. Arthur and Hermann
Friedmann were highly engaged in the restab-
The Friedmanns quickly sensed that the public opinion turned against “the Jews” after the
lost world war. What was first discussed by the
mob in the backyards turned into the dominant worldview and all of a sudden, they, as
front-line soldiers, were to bear the blame for
the lost war, just because they were of a different faith as their neighbours. In order to set an
example against the growing anti-Semitism,
Arthur Friedmann founded a Jena’s location
group of the “Reichbund jüdischer Frontkämpfer” (Reich association of Jewish front-line soldiers) in January 1919 but all their efforts to
confront and fight against the defamations
were in vain.
The Expulsion from the “German
national community”
It started to become dangerous, when the National Socialists declared the Jews to a “race”
of its own. Even in the case of the Friedmanns
converting to another religion – as many oth er
Jews did – in the eyes of the new rulers they
would always remain “Jews” and a letter from
Arthur Friedmann to one of his former fellow
77
Charles H. Friedman
Correspondence concerning Arthur Friedmann’s expulsion from the associations.
78
Charles H. Friedman
Correspondence concerning Arthur Friedmann’s expulsion from the associations.
79
officers shows that he did not understand
what was happening around him. His mates
had expelled him from the association in October 1933, which was managed in a polite
manner and with a lot of sympathy. This, however, only obscured the fact that the non-Jewish Germans wanted to relegate “the Jews” to
the fringe of society: the educated Germans
did it in a polite manner, the uneducated SA
thugs in a far more brutal manner. Arthur Friedmann’s fervent commitment to Germany did
not make any difference and it was no longer
about him as a person, but merely about him
as a member of this “race”.
Immediately after January 1933, the resentments towards the Jewish population became
an inherent part of the politics and the public
life. The boycott activities, induced by the new
Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, against Jewish
businesses, physicians and lawyers at the beginning of April 1933, also hit the Friedmanns
hard and like many others, they tried to be “invisible” and hoped that the storm would calm.
However, their latitude and space for movement became increasingly constrained. AntiSemitic decrees and regulations soon followed
the first boycott campaign and the infamous
sign boards in parks and public spaces with
the inscription “Jews unwanted” made the extent of the suppression clear to everyone. Anti-Semitic propaganda and the Nuremberg
laws continued to fuel the hatred against “the
Jews”, which erupted in open violence on November 9/10, 1938.
The Friedmanns, like so many other families,
experienced “the Night of the Broken Class”
petrified with horror and for Arthur Friedmann, it was inconceivable that all boundaries of civilisation had been crossed. The state
that he used to be so proud of, did nothing
to help or protect them as the police ignored
the case that his house was looted and that
he was chased through Jena. The mob was
jeering and his friends of the chamber of commerce were hiding behind their window curtains. Hermann, as well as Arthur Friedmann,
were both abducted to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Kept like animals, they were
imprisoned for several weeks and every day,
they were forced to stand at attention for
hours without enough food and clothing outside in the cold. Whoever could not hold out
was beaten with a truncheon. When Hermann
Friedmann collapsed due to fatigue, he was so
severly beaten at the back of his neck by the
warden that he never recovered from it. On
February 15, 1940, Hermann Friedmann died
as a result of the detainment. In the morning of November 19, 1938, the head teacher of
Arthur Friedmann’s two sons told them that
they were no longer welcomed at his school
and their parents felt impelled to send their
children in one of the few Jewish boarding
schools for over two years. The National Socialists were allowed to do whatever they felt like
to families like the Friedmanns and every attempt of theirs to exert influence, failed to improve their situation. There was no law in the
national socialist state that protected the “alien race of the Jews” and there was no judge
that would make an end to these crimes. After
the pogrom, the atmosphere was dominated
by fear and distrust and overnight, neighbours
and friends had turned into foes.
80
The “Aryanization“ of The H. Friedmann Company
The business of the Friedmanns was a good
catch. With two workers and six employees the
economic value of the business was estimated
at a price of 53.200 Reichsmark. The previous
year’s turnover amounted to 186.157,21 Reichsmark with net earnings of 15. 331 Reichsmark.
Therefore, it was no surprise that the “Aryanization“ of the business promised to be very
lucrative and thus many people targeted the
Jewish business. In the course of 1938, the destruction of the family’s economic livelihood
took place. The Friedmanns sensed what was
going to happen to them and like the way
they behaved in their private sphere, they also
wanted to become “invisible” with regards to
their business. On July 1, 1938, they entered
into a rental agreement with the tradesman
Paul Voigt from Magdeburg: an “Aryan” was
supposed to help revoking the takeover from
other voracious “Aryans” of the business. The
agreement, however, was nullified shortly after its closure through the intervention of Jena’s municipal legal office, the Association of
German Livestock Farming as well as the Thur-
The company logo.
Charles H. Friedman
Shop in the Gretgasse.
ingian Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
Apparently, the public authorities had uncovered the deception and now they pressed
both sides to the closure of an agreement at
a sales price that neither the Friedmanns nor
Voigt, who was lacking the financial means,
could possibly accept. The Farming Association and the Chamber of Industry and Commerce alone would have benefited from the
price fixing, because many of their members
were interested in the acquisition of the business and thus were able to purchase it at a
dumping price.
After some time, Edwin Ullrich from Apolda,
tradesman and NSDAP member, moved into
the stalled negotiations and he introduced
himself as a financier to the merchant Voigt
from Magdeburg for the “Aryanization” of the
lucrative medium-sized business. Ultimately,
the new acquisition agreement between both
interested parties and the Friedmanns was
concluded, which was also approved by the
Gau economic advisory board and the municipal legal office of Jena. The NSDAP district
81
administration of Jena-Stadtroda, howev er,
raised concerns over the implementation of
the agreement on the grounds of existing ambiguity over the political adequacy of the potential buyer Paul Voigt. This objection against
the takeover of the Jewish business was in line
with the principles of “Aryanization” that the
district administration urged for: Exclusively, reliable NSDAP members were ought to
be considered as buyers or trustees. With the
takeover of Jewish businesses and property,
they were supposed to act as political placeholders for the later access of the municipalities or the Land to the real estate in question.
In case of the company H. Friedmann, the district administration was insistent that the business was sold to a prospective buyer that fully
satisfied its criteria. So, a new agreemnet between the Friedmanns and the merchant Johann-Heinrich Voigt from Wittenberg was
concluded on October 17, 1938 – yet again, it
was only for a short period of time. Immediately after the events of the “Kristallnacht” pogrom, the latter withdrew his offer and thus a
new buyer had to be found.
Eventually, the company H. Friedmann was
assigned to he Hörchner family at a price of
35.500 Reichsmark, which was only half of the
actual value. The Hörchner family was classified as “Aryan” according to national socialist
“racial criterias” and ran an ironware business in
Jena. The early release of Hermann and Arthur
Friedmann from Buchenwald stood thereby in direct conjunction with the final settlement of the sales agreement. Since the failure
of the first rental agreement with Paul Voigt
in Juli 1938, the family had been deprived of
Charles H. Friedman
he family mansion in Jena West (undated).
any influence on the sale of its own company.
Swift ly, the business was brought under the
control of the authorities and Hermann and
Arthur Friedmann sealed the final sales agreement with their signature their roles as losers
in the game of poker, in which their assets had
been at stake. They were left with nothing and
their livelihoods had been destroyed.
There was still more to disperse. On grounds
of the decree on the use of Jewish assets of
December 3, 1938, the exchange control office
Rudolstadt issued a ruling against Arthur Friedmann on September 28, 1939 that denied him
any access to his property. Now, he had to ask
for permission before he was allowed to access
82
his own money. Moreover, the town Jena confiscated the villa of the Friedmanns on April 1,
1940 and declared it a “Jew-house”. From then
on, the building served as accomodation facility for Jews that had been expelled from their
rented flats or whose property had been taken over by “Aryans”. Not long after, however,
the house fell prey to the compulsory sale to
a “partisan of impeccable reputation and character” at a very low price.
Coerced into Emigration
After the death of his father, Arthur Friedmann
decided to leave his home country. He had
been hoping to get through until the end.
When the decision was made, connections,
fortune and the remaining assets helped him
to render his departure from Germany pos­
sible. An uncle, who was living in Denver, obtained the life-saving visas to the U.S. for the
Charles H. Friedman
Arthur and Edith Friedmann (undated).
83
Charles H. Friedman
Karl-Heinz Friedmann’s passport.
84
family in 1941. Arthur, his wife Edith and their
children Carlheinz and Hansjürgen were allowed to leave but all their assets had to stay
in Jena, except from two suitcases and ten
Reichs­mark per person. On one of the very
last refugee-trains that departed Germany towards the West, the Friedmanns left into an
uncertain future on July 1, 1941. Crowded into
a full train of which windows were covered
and doors were locked, they went via France
to Spain. In the most confined space, the refugees shared their fears, hopes and misery. The
hunger, the heat and the dirt made the journey unbearable.
In Barcelona, where they were going to board
a ship to America a few days later, and it was
the first time that the Friedmanns slept in clean
sheets again since they went on this odyssey.
For the time being, they had left the horrors of
the war behind. It was almost something like a
holiday feeling and for a short period of time
normality seemed to have been restored. At
the day of departure, however, their dreams
bursted like a bubble: Hansjürgen, the youngest son, had developed a heavy tonsilitis and
it was not clear, whether he would be allowed
on board in this condition. Suddenly, the fear
returned and with it the difficult decision to
leave the child behind or to hold out togeth er
and most likely to be sent back to Germany.
A helpful Jewish physican was able to smuggle the boy on board and thus save the life of
the family.
Six weeks after their departure from Jena, the
Friedmanns arrived in their new home in the
city of New York. As one of the very last refu-
gee families that managed to leave Germany,
a new period of life was beginning for them –
far away from the raging war in Europe. They
had survived and they were once again hopeful. They were aware that there was no going
back any time soon. They had arrived with literally nothing, thus the following years rebuilding their livelihood was going to become
difficult and full of deprivations. Yet, the family held together and everybody tried to cope
with the new life situation as much as possible.
The children distributed morning papers or
worked as shoeshine boys after school. Arthur
Friedmann worked night shifts as a dishwasher in a hotel and Edith earned money through
cleaning jobs and as sewer and so the first
two to three years passed in this manner. They
never heard from any of their relatives that had
stayed in Germany ever again: Arthur’s mother
Klara, his sister Martha and her husband Alfred
were murdered, in the course of the deportations beginning in 1942, like the entire rest of
the family.
85
Marion Kaiser
“So far, I have never undertaken any steps to emigrate.”
ThHStAW Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, Geldkarte: Max Heilbrun
Max Heilbrun’s stored value card with the date of his release from the Buchenwald concentration camp: March 12, 1938.
86
The Company “Gebrüder Heilbrun” from Nordhausen
and on November 7, 1924 their daughter, Hannelore, was born.
Max Heilbrun was a respected and successful
horse trader in Nordhausen. Born on August 5,
1886, he stemmed from Immenrode, a small
parish near Sondershausen. The Heilbrun family had been domiciled here since the 18th
century. Max Heilbrun was possibly one of
the last family members that had left the village. He got involved with the family business
and also became horse trader and since 1923,
he ran the company “Gebrüder Heilbrun” together with his cousin, Norbert Heilbrun. Norbert lived with his wife Johanna and his son
Günther in Greußen. Their house at the Markt
12 was also the head office of the business. In
1924, Max Heilbrun married the 19 years younger Karoline Schwabe, who was also called Lola
Karoline was the daughter of a horse trader
from Nordhausen. Her father, Julius Schwabe,
owned a business of the same name in the
Uferstraße 15. After the death of her parents
(Julius Schwabe 1923, Gertrud Schwabe 1920),
Karoline and her brother, Alfred Schwabe, continued running the business. When Max Heilbrun moved to Karoline in Nordhausen in autumn 1925, he assumed the business and
made it a branch of the company “Gebrüder
Heilbrun”, yet maintained the name “Julius
Schwabe”. Over 10 years, Max Heilbrun successfully ran his company. He also owned a
house as well as fields and willows in Immenrode and Niedertopfstedt.
ThHStAW, Min. der Finanzen 3662, Bl. 47
A transcript of Max Heilbrun’s death certificate from England. He died in London on August 13, 1946.
87
After the National Socialist Takeover in 1933: The Path to Ruin
Until 1937, the turnover of the company had
been continuously rising. Already a year later, the gross earnings halved so that Max Heilbrun had to apply for respite of his estimated
taxes. Norbert and Max found themselves in
such great financial difficulties that they even
considered the liquidation of the business. On
October 3, 1938, they informed the tax authorities about their circumstances and for this reason, the family came under the suspicion of
wanting to leave the country. The finance authorities demanded not only the payment of
the “Judenvermögensabgabe” (capital levy for
Jews) but also instantly charged the “Reichsfluchtsteuer” (Reich flight-tax). Max Heilbrun
refused in a letter of October 27, 1938, to pay
the amount for he had no intentions to emigrate. If anything, he believed that his poor
health would not allow him for a new beginnig abroad. In the early morning of November
10, 1938, the Gestapo picked up 150 Jews from
their flats and houses in Nordhausen and since
the police station was too small, they were
gathered at the “Siechhof”, a former hospital.
The day before, members of the SA and the
SS as well as others trouble-makers had devastated the businesses and at night they had set
Nordhausen’s synagogue on fire. 67 of the detainees had not been released from “protective
custody” but instead, were taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp in the morning—
amongst them was Max Heilbrun. His cousin Norbert Heilbrun, who had been arrested in
Greußen, was also taken to Buchenwald. Max
Heilbrun was released from the concentration
camp on December 6, 1938 and his cousin followed him two days later. Now, both began to
prepare their emigration, which Max Heilbrun
had strictly repudiated until this point.
After the Arrest of November
1938: Coerced Emigration
Shortly after his return from imprisonment,
Max Heilbrun undertook the first steps towards emigration. On December 9, the mayor’s office of Nordhausen informed the fiscal authorities that Max Heilbrun had notified
the police of his business’ liquidation and of
his emigration plans. Max and Norbert Heilbrun anticipated extensive financial penalities
due to “short-run liquidation” of their business.
Already on December 15, Max Heilbrun took
the next step and sold his house in the Uferstraße to the slaughterhouse “Gebrüder Kellner” in Nordhausen. The owners of the same
property had made an offer at the time when
he was still in detention, on November 25. It
was written that: “The sellers are non-Aryan. The husband Heilbrun remains at Weimar
(Buchenwald) for the time being”. The Kellners,
however, were prepared to pay more than the
“standard price”.
On December 19, 1938, one of the company sites in Niedertopfstedt was sold to a local
farmer. Max Heilbrun found it difficult to part
with his house in Immenrode and so it initially remained in his property. Norbert Heilbrun
sold the head office of the “Gebrüder Heilbrun”
in Greußen to the “Modehaus Wild” on May 6,
1939 and in the sales agreement, he empha-
88
ThHStAW, Min. der Finanzen 3662, Bl. 49
In 1948, Karoline Heilbrun filed a claim for restitution for her lost property in Thuringia.
89
sized that he urgently required the money in
order to leave the country.
After the War: Efforts towards
Restitution
On January 10, 1939, Max Heilbrun had to file
an application for a clearence certificate, necessary for emigration, which he received. Thereupon, the exchange control office Magdeburg
blocked all accounts of the family and they
had no longer access to their financial assets.
Karoline Heilbrun reported later that her husband had been arrested again in March 1939.
He was released, when he reassured that he
was going to leave the country within three
weeks at the end of March 1939. Karoline and
Hannelore Heilbrun had to give up their home
and emigrated to the United Kingdom. They
settled in London and were officially expatriated from the German state on October 3, 1939.
The fiscal authorities confiscated their property in Immenrode in October 1941 and sold it to
local farmers in the same month.
Max Heilbrun and his family never returned to
Germany. On August 13, 1946, Max died from
a heart attack in London. His family emigrated to the U.S. His daughter Hannelore had met
and married Hans Heilbrun in England, who
also came from Nordhausen and belonged to
another branch of the Heilbrun family. Hans
Heilbrun had also been imprisoned in Buchenwald and emigrated to the Netherlands in
1939 and then in 1940 to the USA. There, he
became a soldier and came to England. Hannelore and Max Heilbrun relocated to the U.S.
after the end of the war. Hannelore’s mother,
the widow of Max Heilbrun, followed them
and moved to New York. Her financial situation was thereby so difficult that she only managed to obtain her assets that had been left in
the English exile much later on. In 1948, she
was finally ready to claim restitution in Germany. The department for compensation of the
Thuringian state accepted her claims, confiscated the properties that had been necessarily sold in the course of the emigration and appointed a trustee.
Max Heilbrun and his family survived the war
in London. But his cousin Norbert did not manage to escape. He had tried to emigrate with
his family to Cuba and together with 900 other Jewish refugees, Norbert Heilbrun and his
family boarded the ship “St. Louis” in Hamburg
on May 13, 1939. The entry to Cuba, howev er,
was denied and the ship with the refugees
on board had to return to Europe. Initially, the
people found refuge in various Western European states but many of them were caught
up in the war again. After the failed attempt
to reach Cuba, Norbert Heilbrun and his family went to France. It is still unkown, when and
un der what circumstances they had perished.
Karoline Heilbrun tried to get back the house
of her family in the Uferstraße 15 in Nordhausen. However, there was hardly anything
left of the house. During bombings of Nordhausen on April 3/4 , 1945, large parts of the
city had been destroyed. After the war, the
Kellners who had bought the house and land
from the Heilbruns which in turn had been
driven into exile, were only able to rebuild the
stables belonging to the house.
90
ThHStAW, Min. der Finanzen 3662, Bl. 111
The conviction and the expropriation of the Kellner family impeded the restitution of the property in the
Uferstraße in favour of the Heilbrun family.
Though a full restitution never took place, lawyers and arbitrators managed to negotiate
an agreement between the parties, in which
it was stipulated that Karoline Heilbrun was
to receive a quarter of the property. Her as
well as the Kellners accepted the terms of the
contract. On January 5, 1950, the agreement
was at hand and first approvals had been obtained. The authorization of land registry was
the only thing missing as the registry refused
to approve it and formal errors were given as
a reason. While still attempting to retrieve at
least some of her property, Karoline Heilbrun
passed away in 1950 in New York. The real estate of the Heilbruns from Nordhausen, in the
Uferstraße 15 was disappropriated by the DDR.
This took place in connection with an accusation of the Kellners over “economic crimes”
in 1951. They were charged and their entire
property was confiscated by the DDR state. A
communication by the office for the protection of public property to the original owners,
the Heilbruns, regarding the question of restitution read: “The release of the property for
91
the purpose of compensation is therefore not
possible.” Whether Hannelore Heilbrun, the
daughter of Max and Karoline Heilbrun, continued to push for the return of the house is
unclear. A brother of Norbert, named Menny
Heilbrun, attempted to get compensations for
the company premises but without any signifi­
cant success.
Hannelore and Hans Heilbrun stayed in the
USA. They passed away in the 1970s and left
one son, Peter Heilbrun. After 1990, the Jewish Claims Conference received a compensation payment for the lost assets of the com­
pany “Gebrüder Heilbrun”.
93
Tina Schüßler
“... if we have to wait for Brazil or any other opportunity, we are
going to grow old and dull and our last pennies will soon be wasted.”
Stadtarchiv Eisenach Sammlung Judaica Nr. 29, S.2.
In the period between 1996 and 1998, Ruth Kirchheimer wrote several
letters with memories of the time in Eisenach.
94
The Kirchheimer Family from Eisenach
The Kircheimeir family shared the fate of their
Jewish fellow citizens as they had to suffer from
the reprisals of the national socialist dictatorship. In a smaller context, it was the fate of a
German family of four that was torn apart and
destroyed and their story can be told without
any gaps. This is especially due to family member Ruth, who later assumed the name Marie
Therese. In France, hidden by nuns, she survived World War II and at a very old age, she
told the story of her life in letters and during
personal encounters. “Who has survived from
our family?”, she wrote on November 16, 1997.
“Only those, who had emigrated: two brothers
of my mother that went to Brazil and my sister Inge, who went as a cook to England. The
youngest sister of my mother, her husband
and son perished at a concentration camp.
They used to live in Mainz. The relatives that
were in Nieheim, suffered the same fate.”
Family Background
Ruth’s father, Siegfried Kirchheimer, was born
as farmer’s son on October 28, 1887. He undertook an apprenticeship to become a shoemaker and came to Erfurt in 1914. After his deployment as Jewish front-line soldier, he met
the master tailor Frieda Marx, who was born
in Mainz on July 7, 1894. She had relocated to
Erfurt in December 1918 and on May 14, 1919,
they married. Five months later, the couple
moved to Eisenach and opened a shoe shop
Tina Schüßler
The house in the Goethestraße 25a in 2008. The
entrance to the Kirchheimer family’s apartment
was on the left side.
on November 3, 1919. The small business was
located at the family’s housing space in the
Goethestraße 25a.
The Kirchheimers appear for the first time in
1920 on the register of the Jewish congregation that then counted 139 members. They
were not a strictly religious family – their shoe
shop was open on Sabbath and they only
went to the synagogue for major celebrations.
On March 12, their first daughter Ingeborg was
born and five years later, on January 2, 1925, a
second daughter, Ruth Kirchheimer, was born.
95
Stadtarchiv Eisenach, 40.7 Sammlung Judaica Nr. 44
Marriage ceremony of Stella and Julius Heilbrun in Eisenach. Also attendant: Frieda Kirchheimer
(third row, second person on the left) and Siegfried Kirchheimer (third row, sixth person on the left).
Threat
In 1933, the daily life of the young family was
going to change as the anti-Semitic measures
were gradually confining and complicating
the life of the Kirchheimers. The driving force
behind those measures was Hermann Köhler,
who was appointed NSDAP district leader on
July 15, 1934 and his office in the Goethe­straße
25 was located directly next to the Kirchhei­
mers’ apartment. On August 21, 1935, he announced his intentions, “to combat against
Jewry” on the Thuringian state paper. At the
behest of the district leader, Eisenach’s cultural
institutions joined this “battle” and for this reasons, the Jewish citizens were denied access to
the public baths, restaurants and to the Wartburg.
In 1938, the resentments towards the Jews culminated with the pogrom of November 9/10
that took place across the Reich. Ruth Kirchheimer recalls in a letter from August 8, 1996:
“When we woke up on November 9, 1938,
96
Stadtarchiv Eisenach, 41.3 J 317
NSDAP district leader Hermann Köhler.
Anti-Semitic article in the newspaper “Thüringer Staatszeitung” on August 21, 1935.
97
the windows of our house had been painted
red. On the footpath in front of the house –
Goethestr. 25a – it was written in large letters:
‘Whoever shops here, betrays his own people’
(...) My mother refused to stay at the house for
the another night.” Frieda Kirchheimer and her
daughter fled to friends in Erfurt at the crack
of dawn. Their father tried to hide, but was
caught and abducted to the Buchenwald concentration camp. After a week, mother and
daughter had the heart to return and what
they found was disastrous. Ruth described the
state of the department: “Our flat was in shatters. Enormous stones were lying all around,
the furniture had been hashed, the mattresses
had been slit, all the dishes were nothing but
broken pieces and the doors were difficult to
open. It was in such a state that we could no
longer live there.” On January 29, 1939, the father, Siegfried Kirchheimer, was released from
the concentration camp. The shoe shop was
confiscated and on December 1, 1938, these
proceedings were recorded in a concealing
manner as “voluntary business deregistration”.
This was at a point in time, when the true owner was still held at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Stadtarchiv Eisenach, Gewerbekartei, 21.4 Nr. 31, Bl. 01
Record of “voluntary” business deregistration of Siegfried Kirchheimer’s shoe shop.
98
It was not only the loss of the family’s financial
sustenance, but also the protection of privacy that had been spurned and destroyed. The
befriended Ochs family from Eisenach provided the Kirchheimers with a room in the Stolze­
straße 5 but the situation was depressing. Due
to lack of space, both sisters, Ingeborg and
Ruth Kirchheimer, slept in the house of Paul
Seliger and his brother Leo Frank in the Clemdastraße 5. The deprivation of rights by law
had also affected the then thirteen year old
Ruth. On November 15, 1938, Jewish children
were no longer allowed to attend school and
from January 1939, Ruth received private lessons together with other Jewish children from
Eisenach in one class. The decision to emigrate
was finally made during this time, when the
Kirchheimers were deprived of their economic
and social livelihood.
ate – and in the end futile - search for a pos­
sibility to leave the country.
The Way Out
It was a balancing act between hope and desperation and through the compulsory liquid­
ation of the business, the Kirchheimers had
been deprived of their livelihood. This was
the reason that they were lacking the financial
means to pay the necessary travelling expenses for the emigration and the high entry fees.
The greatest obstacle was the restrictive immigration policy of most countries that lastly
shattered all plans of escape. Eventually, their
passports expired and the only remaining option was the illegal crossing of the borders.
Frieda Kirchheimer pressed relentlessly for her
second daughter, Ruth, to get out of Germany. Ruth’s first attempt to escape failed at the
Dutch border at the beginning of 1939, where
the train had been stopped and checked by
At the beginning of December 1938, the couple Frieda and Siegfried Kirchheimer and their
daughter Ingeborg filed applications for issuing passports. Subject matter: “Emigration”.
The now eighteen year old Ingeborg Kirchhei­
mer obtained the permission to leave Germany three months after her application, because
she had found employment as a cook for a
family (Peek) in England. Her parents and Ruth
stayed behind but they tried everything to
immigrate to France. They attempted to get a
residence permit for England, after all the possibilities for an emigration to Brazil appeared
to be unpromising. The letters that they were
writing to their daughter reflects the desper-
In a letter dated May 3, 1939, says: “Please see,
if you can do something for us, until now I cannot see any success on any side and will soon
become pessimistic, whether we can ever get
out of here?”, and on May 21: “You know your
mum. She is completely distraught!”, on June
8: “...we do not have much hope left, because
the amount of endeavours we haven undertaken is enormous and until now left without
any success”, on June 14: “We are learning English as much as we can, but I still cannot im­
agine how we are going to communicate on
the other side, probably you have to be our interpreter every now and then. (...) outside we
are just deaf and dumb spongers...”, on July 2: “I
have been put off for seven months now and
I am still just at the beginning.”
99
Stadtarchiv Eisenach, 40/7, Sammlung Judaica Nr. 29, Blatt 01
Ruth Kirchheimer’s child’s travel document, issued on December 23, 1938.
100
the police but she tried again on July 11, 1939.
The father’s sister, Minna Bargeboer, who lived
with her Dutch husband Adolf in Nice, was supposed to smuggle Ruth across the border. The
bold venture succeeded and Ruth was able
to escape. She was accomodated by her aunt
and uncle in Nice and could attend a convent
school. This was the only catholic school that
was prepared to accept a German without any
knowledge of the French language. She maintained contact to her parents with the help of
messages via the Red Cross.
Frieda and Siegfried Kirchheimer stayed behind in Eisenach and their fate can only be reconstructed incoherently. On July 2, 1939, the
father had written to Ingeborg that he was going to be drafted for “work”. For two months,
from January 9 until February 27, 1942, his work
at the metal factory Alfred Schwarz in Eisenach
can be accounted for. It has not been conveyed when, where and what type of forced
labour, Siegfried Kirchhei­mer, had to render after that. Frieda Kirchhei­mer obtained the permission to “give lessons in altering and making
Stadtarchiv Eisenach, Gewerbekartei, 21.4 Nr. 31, Blatt 02
Business registration for the master tailor Frieda Kirchheimer.
101
of wardrobes for personal demand of racial fellows for the purpose of emigration”.
In 1941, Frieda and Siegfried Kirchheimer moved
from the Stolzestraße to the Julius-von-Eichelplatz. Both accommodations were “Jew houses”. With the abrogation of the protection of
tenants on April 30, 1939, Jewish tenants were
forced to leave their homes. Simultaneously,
they were obliged to accommodate other Jewish tenants or lodgers, which implied a grad­ual
ghettoisation in “Jew houses” for the Jews in
Eisenach. The Kirchheimers’ hopes to escape
were irrevocably destroyed with the emigration ban for Jews from the Reich’s sphere of influence on October 23, 1941. Himmler’s decree,
which prohibited any emigration from the territories of continental Europe occupied by the
National Socialists for the duration of the war,
meant ultimately the death sentence for most
Jews that were still living in Germany.
Deportation
The last time Ruth heard from her parents was
at the beginning of 1942. Her sister Ingeborg
received a message via the Red Cross from
a family friend that was still in Eisenach, Dr.
Edgar Grünbaum: “Parents have departed on
May 9, 1942. Without news since months.” The
last pictures of Frieda and Siegfried Kirchheimer were taken on May 9, 1942 showing them
on their way to Eisenach’s train station. It was a
Saturday, when they were deported, together
with 56 other Jews from Eisenach, first to Wei­
mar and on May 10 with hundreds of Jewish
citizens from the whole of Thuringia, via Leip-
zig to the ghetto Belzyce southwest of Lublin.
Eisenach’s police records show the entry: “The
transport from Eisenach to Weimar took place
without interferences. The people did not discuss much about the events.” Frieda and Siegfried Kirchheimer’s fate since the deportation
is unknown and they are considered missing.
Survival
Staying in France that had been occupied by
German troops, started being dangerous for
Ruth Kirchheimer. In October 1943, one of the
catholic school’s nuns took Ruth Kirchheimer with forged documents to the convent in
Digne, 150 kilometres from Nice as her aunt
Minna had decided so, because of fear for
Ruth. Minna and Adolf Bargeboer were discovered by the German Armed Forces at the end
of 1943 and Ruth’s uncle died in the concentration camp Auschwitz in the same year. Minna
was deported from the detention – and transit camp Dancy in France to Auschwitz, where
she was murdered.
Also in Digne, the life of Ruth, who was by
now eighteen years old, was at risk due to the
permanent presence of German soldiers. She
spent the years of the occupation, hidden behind the walls of the convent in order ensure
her safety and it was here that she converted to Christanity. She was looking for a sort of
death, she explained in an interview in 2002, as
motivation for her conversion. She could not
disengage with the fate of her family, thus she
wanted to get away from Europe. So, the sister Ruth went to Cameroon in 1957 and she
102
Stadtarchiv Eisenach , 41/3 , J500
Frieda Kirchheimer (in the background left, looking towards the camera)
on the way to the train station on May 9, 1942. Eisenach’s citizens are
clearly visible, observing the procession from the kerbside.
Stadtarchiv Eisenach, 41/3 , J 498
Siegfried Kirchheimer (1st person on the right with a large rucksack) entering the train. The official chronicle of the town Eisenach stated on
May 20, 1942: “After a notification that was received only a few days earlier, all Jews under the age of 65 (...) were called to gather at the property
of the Goethestraße 48 in order to report for the transport (...) The Jews,
who were about to be evacuated, were allowed to send parcels of 50kg
to Weimar and to carry hand luggage. The train departed to Weimar
11.06 am.”
103
worked there twenty years as a missionary
teacher. It was 1990 when Ruth returned to
her hometown Eisenach for the first time.
Her sister Ingeborg, who had emigrated to
England, survived World War II and got married in London in 1941, gave birth to three
children and worked as a shop assistant. She
passed away in 1987. In September 1995, Ruth
took part in a “meeting project”, accompanied
by the eldest son of her sister, Bruno Eismark,
to which the town Eisenach had invited former
Jewish citizens. On December 30, 2003, at the
age of 78 years, Ruth Kirchheimer passed away
as sister Marie Therese.
105
Philipp Gliesing
“Stop purchases at David Binder’s!”
Binder’s Department Store in
Pößneck
David Jakob Binder was born in the Ukrainian
university town Czernowitz’ on July 21, 1879.
His parents, Benjamin and Milka Binder belonged to a merchant family that maintained
close ties to their Jewish tradition. Brought up
in this spirit, David went as young man to Germany. At the beginning, he stayed with relatives in Leipzig but in March 1903, the young
man moved to Erfurt, where a thriving Jewish community existed. Three years later, he
eventually settled in the calm, eastern Thuringian town of Pößneck and on May 27, 1908,
he wedded the 27 year old Hedwig Ullmann
from Mannheim. The petite woman also came
(Reproduktion Foto Peterlein)
Lithography, pre-1933.
106
from a large Jewish merchant family and was
a trained servant-girl. The couple started a
business and established a gentrified living.
On January 14, 1920, their son, Adolf Milian
was born in Jena and four years later, his sister
Esther Malke on June 19, 1924.
At first, David Binder rented an accomodation
at Dr. Emil Körner’s house in the Breite Straße.
In 1914, he bought the building and moved
with Hedwig into the second floor. The offic es and showrooms were on the ground
floor and later, a SA-physician and a lawyer
rented the first floor.
ThStAR, Thür. Amtsgericht Pößneck, Nr. 368, Bl. 7
Letterhead of the company.
“Binder’s department store at the
golden corner.”
In the directory of 1907, the 28 year old merchant advertised his “bazaar” under “haberdashery goods” for the first time. Due to a
sound business policy and numerous business trips, the smart father of a family established a good reputation throughout the region. The economically priced offers of slight
seconds, among them household goods,
footwear, textiles and toys, were bought by a
loyale clientele from all walks of life.
David Binder always appeared as generous
employer on festive occasions, his employees received discounts for their purchases.
Helene “Leni” Proßmann and Lotte Gläser had
been the last apprentices of the business and
it was a good time and a valuable apprenticeship to both of them. There was a confiding atmosphere of solidarity and Leni often
helped Mrs. Binder with the household since,
as Jew, she was no longer allowed to employ
a housekeeper, and was on her own.
Advertisement in the local newspaper “Pößnecker Tageblatt” from June 16, 1928.
107
Advertisement in the local newspaper “Pößnecker Zeitung” from August 3, 1934.
Excellent trading relations to Erfurt and Leipzig permitted the purchase of large amounts
of household goods and all kinds of equipment at low prices and also to offer them as
value for money. Advertisements were regularly released on the local newspaper of Pößneck (Pößnecker Zeitung).
The Jewish Community in Pößneck
In the “guide through the Jewish parish administration and welfware work in Germany”, David Binder is registered as chairman of
a Jewish congegregation of sixteen, which
108
existed until 1938. Presumably, there was a
prayer room at the house of the Binders and
between the Jewish families, close ties had
been developed. The Binders always lived
their faith only in their private sphere.
On January 21, 1932, they celebrated the bar
mitzvah of their son Adolf Milian, called Adi,
as was announced in one of Erfurt’s Jewish
weekly papers. Certainly, David Binder must
Wochenblätter für den Synagogenbezirk Erfurt,
Nr. 431 vom 06. Januar 1933
have been proud to have a “son of the commandment.” The head of the family spent
most of his time in his office and his wife kept
close contact with the neighbours and was
regarded as friendly and candid. The affluent
couple was valued and respected throughout Pößneck’s well-educated middle class.
“Stop purchases at David
Binder’s!”
Since 1922, there was NSDAP location group
in Pößneck. In 1927, Joseph Goebbels was a
guest in Pößneck and delivered one of his enthusiastic diatribes. After the takeover, the lo-
Postcard with view of the Breite Straße. On the right side, the show window of David Binder’s department store is visible.
109
cal NSDAP members did everything to implement the guidelines of the “Führer” and
to make Pößneck a NS prime example of a
town. From then on, it was agitated against
well-known Jewish figures like David Binder
at NSDAP gatherings in the hinterland. The
people should “no longer buy Jewish” as the
hatemongers of the new rulers proclaimed
and the countrywide decreed boycott of
April 1, 1933, revealed the level of threat to
the Jews in Pößneck. Customers of Binder’s
department store were photographed, intimidated and summoned, young wretchs
schmeared anti-Semtic slogans with white
colour on the large windows of the store. Not
all people from Pößneck, however, were hindered from continuing to shop at Binder’s by
those ac tions. The farmers and workers failed
to see why they should no longer enter their
valued store.
In the face of the threats, the Binder family
started living seclusively and debated their
emigration to England. However, were they
going to simply give up? Should they be giv-
ing up their business, the house, the books,
the furniture and their home country? David
Binder did not want this to happen—under
no circumstances. David Binder was on a list
on “currently resident Jews” of May 1938 that
was arguably compiled in preparation of the
pogrom and within the same year, the Binder
family lost its livelihood due to such anti-Semitic activities.
On November 10, such a “Jew-campaign” also
took place in Pößneck and the NSDAP had appealed in the daily press to all national social­
ist unions to participate in a “protest rally”. Fire
brigades and police were at stand-by, eye witnesses reported a furious crowd that inflicted
damages to Binder’s store and chanted slogans. Children stole toys from the displays,
but also adult citizens helped themselves.
The old Mr. Binder and his son Adolf were
dragged to the street and openly defamed
and both of them, together with eight other
people, were taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp. All men above 50 were released from detention on November 27, 1938
Announcement in the local newspaper “Pößnecker Zeitung” from November 10, 1938.
110
and so David Binder was among them but his
son Adolf had to stay in the camp. During the
imprisonment, David had been coerced into
giving up his business with immediate effect
and on January 11, 1939, he signed the deregistration of the trade register at the district
court. Three days later, David Binder died of
a heart failure at the hospital in Pößneck. His
longtime rheumatism had deteriorated due
to the “protective custody” in Buchenwald.
The merchant was buried at the cemetery of
the Jewish congregation in Erfurt.
“..., he was such a nice boy and his
sister Esther was also nice...”
Adolf “Adi” Milian was a small, cautious boy,
who grew up with other kids of the neighbourhood and explored with them the backyards of the small high street. He completed
secondary school and took up an apprenticeship at the carpentry “Trognitz”. Due to the fact
that the Nazi regime barred Jews from all professions, he was not allowed to complete his
apprenticeship. Adolf Binder despaired due
to this and from now on stayed close to his
father. After the pogrom night of November
1938, he was also arrested and imprisoned at
Buchenwald for eight weeks. He managed to
escape from Thuringia, yet the details on his
fate after that are scarce and contradictory. It
could be established that his last residence
was in Paderborn. In the 90s, Adolf Milian
Binder visited his home town Pößneck again.
He used to live overseas, as one of the neighbours and former playfellows recalls. His sister
Esther was supposed to prepare for the de-
Gliesing
parture to Palestine from Neuendorf. Yet, this
plan failed and Esther was deported from Berlin to Auschwitz on April 19, 1943. The “37th
eastern transport” was one of the very last deportation-trains from Berlin.
“The buyers assure that they are
of German blood”
After the business’ liquidation in December
1938, Hedwig Binder was forced to look on
while everything was being taken away from
her. Eye witnesses account of a “clearance sale”
in the small department store and the lawyer, Dr. jur. Kurt Pfeifer, acted as the “officially authorized liquidator” of the “Aryanization”
111
Pfeiffer, November 4, 1934.
ThStAR, Thür. Amtsgericht Pößneck, Nr. 368, Bl. 10
process. He searched for potential buyers of
the property and drafted a sales agreement,
which was negotiated on March 26, 1940. According to the contract, the widow, Hedwig
Binder, had to hand over the house and the
remaining inventory to the factory owners
Metzel. She received nothing from the sales
price, as the 62.000 Reichsmark stipulated by
the contract, were directly deposited to the
Deutsche Bank to the disposal of the “liquidator”. The Reich finance authorities, represented by the tax office Pößneck, claimed
23.031,35 RM as securing mortgage. The
Deutsche Bank kept 15.000 RM as land charge.
After the contract’s closure, Hedwig Bin­der
had to live under poor circumstances in a
small room of her former property. Food was
strictly rationed and she was only allowed to
buy in shops far way and permitted for Jews.
In the end, she was in such a bad situation
that she considered suicide but the mother
of her former apprentice, Helene Proßmann,
was able to prevent her from doing so and
gave her additional food. At one of their clandestine meetings, she announced distressed
the impending “evacuation” to Belzec. After
Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Oberfinanzpräsident Rudolstadt, Nr. 694, Bl. 70
112
Gliesing
This silver spoon originates from the property of the family. Hedwig Binder managed to sell the same
and other valuable objects to the clockmaker Friedrich in the desparate situation between 1939 and
1942. This way, she resisted the decree on the compulsory hand-over of all valuables owned by Jews.
Adressbuch der Industrie und Handelsstadt Pößneck, 1921
her deportation, she got in touch for a last
time and wrote on a postcard that they still
had not reached their destination yet.
On May 10, 1942, Hewdig Binder was deported from Weimar. The Gestapo ordered in
agreement with the fiscal authorities in Rudolstadt a “safety ruling” of the assets. Their tracks
disappear in the extermination camps. In
1950, the district court Pößneck pronounced
them dead and December 31, 1943 was determined to be their time of death.
113
“... so I can come to enjoy my inheritance.”
After the end of the NS regime, the Thuringi­
an compensation law also applied to the real
estate of the Binders, according to which it
had to be returned to the true owners or to
their heirs. The beneficiaries of the “Aryanization”, the factory owners Metzel, filed an objection in September 1948: “The property
was rightfully sold to them by the then befriend ed Hedwig Binder”, as they stated in
a letter. In February 1949, the caretaker Max
Blau negotiated settlement proceedings
whereupon Hedwig Binder was ought to get
back the entire property. After that, Clemens
Pfeiffer from Jena took over the trusteeship of
the assets. His tasks were to find the heirs as
well as the management and safeguarding of
the house.
In 1951, the governmental trade organisation
pushed for the overhauling of the business
rooms and rented the sales floor and six more
rooms for 450 DM per month. In the meantime, the DDR Interior Ministry was reviewing
the case and demanded tangible results from
Pfeiffer. Ultimately, he identified heirs, from
the Ullmann branch, that is Hedwig’s family.
From eight of Hedwig’s siblings only the six
years younger Toni Miller was still alive. Three
children of Hedwig’s sister, Mathilde, was also
found. The reassignment of the property, however, did not take place because the docu­
mentary verification of the kinship proved to
be difficult and only Toni Miller was still living
in Germany, though in the West of the divided country. The DDR Interior Ministry per-
mitted the registration of the legal heirs into
the cadastre, yet on condition that the potential heirs would settle in the DDR. Toni Miller was not prepared to do so and he died
in Mannheim in 1975. When the emigration
of Hedwig Binder’s nephew from Israel also
failed, the building was assigned to the town
council for beneficial use.
The restitution of the building to the subsequent eligeble heirs took place only after reunification. In 1998, the community of heirs
finally received what used to be owned by
their family. The relatives of the Metzel broth er
filed another objection at the regional authorites for the settlement of property restitution
claims, which, however, was rejected on June
1, 1999. It was stipulated in the explana­tory
statement: “The property was compulsory
sold by the Jewish owners in 1940 due to persecution. It was not proven whether the legal
transaction was also going to be concluded
without the existence of the national socialist
regime. Furthermore, it was not proven that
the seller received the actual sales price.”
114
Amtsgericht Pößneck, Nachlassakte Binder, Bl. 67
115
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